Rfalconcam Forum

This would be a great time to hold our "Lurkers Come Out Day"  :paperbag:, while we wait for Beauty and Dot.ca to start becoming more active at the nest box. :falcon2: :falcon:

Winter has an iron grip on Western NY, but Spring will be here before we know it.   :yahoo:

There are many members of this forum that we have not been introduced to or have been in hibernation for awhile.  It would be a perfect time to come out of lurkerdom and say hello!   :wave:

Don't be shy!  We all started out as a lurker.  I remember the day I posted for the first time on the old Kodak Birdcam forum.  I asked a question and it took me a long time to hit the send button.  I sat there and waited.  Would someone answer me?  Yes!  A couple minutes after I posted my question, someone posted an answer.  I was so excited.   :cheerleader:

So, this is the perfect time to post a question or just a "hi there, nice to meet ya!"   :hiya:

If you used to post, we would love to hear from you.  It's always a special treat to hear from old friends.   :handshake:

Aafke had a great idea!  Here are some questions that we would like to ask new and old members!

How many years have you followed the Rochester Falcons?
What was your favorite moment from last year?
Who was your favorite falcon and why?
Tell us something about some nature thing close to your house?

Let "Lurkers Come Out Day, 2015" begin!!!   :clap:   :logo:

I guess I'm a winter lurker, but very active in season.  Been watching since Mariah and Kavar, I believe 2003.
Favorite moment last year, actually 2.  1.  When Tess (I think it was Tess), stood up on banding day and 2.  When Tess made it back to the NB after being close to the street.

Oops, nature, close to my house.  We feed the birds, have many cardinal families who breed in the woods behind our house.  I don't know what will happen if we ever moved as most of them think their natural food source comes from a grey haired man carrying sunflower seeds.  LOL. Also Peregrines at Niagara Falls, 7 miles away.

The way I figure, we have 883 members, out of those 883 members, approximately 620 are LURKERS!!!!!

It's time people, you signed up for this, time to come out of hiding and say HI!!!!  :wave:

Like Carol said, no time like the present...(today) to come on out!!!  :lurker:

I also lurked before I first posted on the Kodak Bird forum, was scary not knowing if someone would welcome me and say Hii!! They did and well..... 22,401 posts later, just on this forum alone!!  :scaredblue: here I is!!!  Yes Bobbie, grammar, I know!!

Waiting!!!    :whistle:

Hi Jeannine!  Good to hear from you.  Yes, poor Tesh was blown off of the nest box ledge by a strong gust of wind!  She got into a bit of trouble, but soon found her way back to the nest box.  :falcon:

Ah, Tesh the drama queen, yes. But it is Tesh, not Tess.  Here she is peering in the window of the Aqueduct Building on the day of her fledge. 

Come one lurker, come all!  I lurked for a year before even signing up on the forum. Once I did that there was no stopping me.  :)

Grammar?? Moi!?

A big round of applause for any Lurker who comes out of Lurkdom. Look at those we might not have met who are now invaluable parts of the daily Falcon Watch. (MAK?? Your cheeks burning?!)

 :wave:

Oh yes they are Bobbie! I started watching in 2008, the last year Mariah and Kaver nested on Kodak Office-lurking for quite some time until Donna and Janet called me out. I mostly posted smileys in the beginning but as you know I have quite a bit to say now with over 9000 posts not including all the tweets thru the years. My favorite moment last year was seeing falcons flying in the High Falls Gorge. My favorite falcon is and has been Beauty as you all should know. And as far as nature near where I live-well, I have 2 falcons that hang out on my Seneca Towers apartment building named Billie and 99!  :wave:

So, Lurkers!  Now that you've heard from some of the regulars (that used to be lurkers), it's your turn to add your voice to the Rochester Falcon family.

Please sign into the forum and c'mon in.  The water's fine!   :wave:

I've been a semi-lurker since late 2004. I'm not big on writing, so I don't post often.
I got really hooked on the old Kodak cam watching the antics of Aconcagua aka "Little Bit".
Most of my question were always answered by reading what others wrote. That saved me the trouble of asking.
 Last years memorable moments  were watching Nettie's interaction with Nor'easter after he met up with the wall. She was such a devoted sister.
 Most of our bird visitor this year are woodpeckers, cardinals and blue jays.. My neighbor has a coopers hawk that's a regular. It took him a while to figure out why he kept finding bird parts in his lawn.

If I remember wel, isn't your name Linda?

So nice to read these posts.
greetings Aafke

LOL!  Once you got started.....
 :rofl:

Okay - you've shamed me into leaving lurkdom.  I go back to the Kodak Birdcam and started watching after Cabot-Sirocco.  I don't know if that was 2006 or 2007.  So I must say that my favorite falcons are Mariah, Kaver, and their son, Havoc.  I loved watching M&K and their offspring when they nested on the Kodak Tower.  My office has a view of the former nest box and High Falls.  I really miss those times.  Our office will be moving this Spring to B&L (now Legacy Tower), so I'm hopeful I'll be able to see Beauty and DC and their offspring on my lunch hours!  As for our nature at home, we feed the birds (and squirrels, deer, rabbits, etc.) year round and truly enjoy watching them, especially when they're building their nests and raising their young.  We also have a red-tail hawk couple in our back yard, although my husband found a deceased red-tail up the road.  I guess we'll have to wait and see if one or both come back to the nest.  We also have a Coopers Hawk up the road, as well as hearing owls hooting in the morning while it's still dark.  I think they're barn owls. We also have ducks in our creek when it's not frozen and Great Blue Herons flying around.  Can't be sure.  Anyway, I check Falconcam every day, and confess I am a lurker.  I really enjoy all of the reports and all the other posts from our members.  Keep up the good work, and I hope to come out of lurkdom and into watching mode this Spring  :D  Sue (Bess)

yes it is

Hi Linda, nice to see you, you see we still know you.
greetings Aafke

Thanks Sue (Bess) That sound very nice, we love to hear from you about all the nice birds and specially from Beauty and Dot.
I'm pretty sure you wrote before, because of your name Sue (Bess)
greetings Aafke

Thanks, vey nice what you are doing for the birds.
gretings Aafke

Very good!!! And vey nice picture.
greetings Aafke

Hi Sue(Bess)!  Nice to hear from you.  Make sure you tell them you want an office with a window on the west side of the building.  Miss seeing you and Al!

Hi Carol - I miss seeing you, too.  Unfortunately, our new office has only interior cubicles for the likes of me, but I'll be outside a corner office, so hopefully I'll be able to take advantage of it from time to time!  I'm not sure which direction it will face yet, though.  I really don't deal with change very well, but maybe it will turn out that I can see the B&D more often  :happy:  Hope to see you then.  At least the weather should be better by then.  We can only hope!

Well, I know you were able to see the M&K nest box from certain offices at the "button factory" building.  Let's hope you'll have the same opportunity at the new place.  I look forward to seeing you during the spring and summer months on a falcon watch.   :wave:

Bess, what floor will you be on at B&L?  My company used to occupy all of the 4th and 5th floors there, and half of the 9th floor.  I worked in that building for seven years.  I think you'll like it there.  

I began watching in 2007 I think. A friend referred me to a falconcam in downtown San Francisco, watching a pair named George and Gracie raising their brood at a monitored nest box. This was atop a skyscraper among many in the financial district referred to as "the canyon" because of all the tall buildings lining the streets. I was only watching the cam and not yet part of their forum when one day I saw . . . a man picking up the eyasses one by one in the nest box! I was shocked and frightened. It was at that moment I began searching online for a way to find out what was happening, joined their forum and learned what banding was, and also discovered there were other falconcams around the world.

This led me to the Kodak falcons, Mariah and Kaver. I joined the Rochester forum, and began watching every day. I also don't post often here, but I read every post every day. It's wonderful to feel like part of a community, especially from so far away! I live in the high mountain desert in Reno, which is in a valley at the base of Lake Tahoe in the Sierra Nevada mountains, about 4200' elevation. Watching the Rochester and San Francisco falcons got me excited to get involved, and I did. I traveled the 200 miles to San Francisco that year to their fledge watch party with my sister, and met the falcon watchers there. Also attending was a lady from San Jose, who told us they had a pair of falcons hanging out at their brand new City Hall. We got excited hearing that, and arranged to visit her in San Jose with my other sister as well on the July 4th holiday.

The City of San Jose got involved with the Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group and their biologist, Glenn Stewart, who was the man I had seen on the San Francisco cam doing the banding. An agreement was reached, a falconcam installed, and the rest is history. This will be the 9th season for our falcon Clara. She and her third year mate Fernando are already doing their bonding behaviors, and have been regularly mating, so we expect early egg laying again this year. My sisters and I go to San Jose for fledge watch every year. We have made valuable friendships with our fellow watchers there. One sister retired last year and the other is not working at present. I will be retiring this spring, so I plan to have more time for falcon watching!

We have reports of a peregrine in a local city park, and I will be there this weekend trying to locate it. Sorry to mention this to our winter-weary friends in the northeast, but the west coast is suffering from our fourth year of extreme drought, and an extremely mild winter. Today will see a high of 72. But we have no mountain snowpack, our source of water for the coming year. But I digress.

I plan to participate in the great backyard bird count this weekend, and hope to be able to report that peregrine! In my front yard I have an enormous holly bush next to the house, and it is still loaded with red berries. I think I have a robin nest in there. We had an active nest there two years ago. I have birch trees in the front yard, so naturally have a bajillion goldfinches. In the back yard I regularly feed house finches, sparrows and western scrub jays, similar to your blue jay. I also put up suet feeders, so I have downy woodpeckers and northern flickers. And I live within a mile of downtown! Once in a while I will find an American kestrel sitting on a phone pole surveying the neighborhood. Around town I see lots of red tailed hawks, and a few Coopers hawks. At a local park with a small lake we have a family of black crowned night herons.

Hope I haven't expounded too much; probably feeling the need to catch up from not posting! I post on the bay area forum about the happenings in Rochester, and refer people to this forum and falconcam all the time. It's great to feel always welcomed here!

Oh yes, Happy Valentine's Day tomorrow too!  :heart:  :wub:  :heart:

Debbie

Hi Debbie!  Nice to hear from you.  Sounds like you are very busy with watching the falcons out west.  I envy you that you will soon be retiring and able to spend more time with them.  I dream of that day.   :happy:

Thanks for catching us up on what is happening in your falcon world.  Good luck finding that new Peregrine in the park!  Where you live, sounds lovely, except for the long drought. 

Take care and please keep us up to date with your falcons.  I'd say, keep warm, but it sounds like you are already doing that!   8)

And happy Valentines day to you too!

I remember watching George & Gracie  and the year the falconcam started in San Jose. It seemed like I had more time to watch all the cams back then. Now I seem to only have enough time for Rochester.

There's never too much chatter here, in my humble opinion!

I always enjoyed your posts of what you could see from the Button Factory! Good luck with the move...hopefully you'll have good views from there!

I remember back then having 15 cams open at one time!! Very hard now and I don't know why!!  :whistle:

As soon as a tour of the new space is allowed, I'll let you know what my view is.  In any event, there's always lunch hours and binoculars!  :thumbsup:

Hi Patsy - We'll be on the 18th floor, so the view (when I can see it) should be pretty awesome.  The location should shave off around 5 minutes of my commute time, and hopefully I'll run into some watchers as well.  As you can tell, I'm trying to look at the good points of moving versus leaving the High Falls and wildlife in the gorge. :confused:

Oh wow, you're up in the high rent district on the 18th floor! :)  I was on the 5th floor.  It's a beautiful building, parking is handy, the cafeteria is great, and you don't have to go outside to go to the library (old or new, there is a tunnel) or Tim Horton's.  Can you tell I miss being in B&L?

Due to the bitter cold, snowy weather, the Lurkers Come Out Day has been extended!   :yahoo:

I started way back in 2001 or 2002.  I still read the board every day, but don't post much.  I sure enjoy both the Falcon discussion as well as the general nature topics.  Thank you all so much!

Hi Nora!  Always nice to hear from you.   :wave:

 :wave: Hiya, Nora!!

June. How about June?? Would that be good??

I don't know Bobbie.  This is Rochester after all.  July maybe.   8)

Hi Patsy - Gee - I didn't know we'll be in the high rent district!  More importantly, we can get to Tim Horton's without going outside???  Oh boy!!  :2thumbsup:  I hope I like B&L as much as you did.  Stay tuned.

Yes, you can get to Tim Horton's without going outside.  You'll have to go through the garage, so you may need a coat, but no boots.   :2thumbsup:

Okay, so I'm really late, but this is the first time I've checked in in a very long time.  Better late than never??

I mostly lurk, but during the busy season I may pipe up from time to time.  In the old days we used to post pics with funny captions more often and I did that once in a while.

I've been around since 2000?  2001?  Something like that.

Didn't watch much last year, very busy, so don't have a favorite moment.

Favorite falcon - Kaver, our cutie patootie.  Never forget when he fed Mariah after she was hurt.  Still brings tears to my eyes.

Nature by me - fall hawk migration on Mount Wachusett.  It's about 20 minutes away and I love it.

Hi Colleen!  You're not late at all.  It's great hearing from you. 

That 2006 season was hard to watch, but in the end, it turned out to be a great year.  Two of the three surviving fledglings went on to find their own nest sites and mates, and raised young of their own.  Seeing Kaver feed an injured Mariah was one of the most memorable moments in all the years I've watched the Rochester Falcons.

:wave:

Great to hear from everyone!


Nora in Florida

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

It sure is Nora!  I hope more falcon fans come out of lurking.   :the_wave:

lurker
a person who reads the posts on a forum, message board, etc, but does not post  Urban dictionary

I'm certainly no lurker, but I have been gone for a while.  My husband, Frank, had surgery 2 weeks ago and I've have had my hands full with him & all this dang snow!  He's doing fine, nothing really serious, but he can't lift more than 10 lbs for a while! So that leaves the snow removal to me- almost 55 years old and used the snow blower for the first time in my life! haha! Not bad, until it broke! Out for repairs, yet I do believe it is snowing out there again! I am SOOOO looking forward to Spring & becoming a watcher! :yahoo:

I'm glad it was nothing serious with hubby. This is the first year I haven't run a snow blower and I miss it. I enjoyed getting out in the fresh air, of course it helps that I like snow! Spring is right around the corner, I think!
 :hahaha:

Glad you're back with us Pat and happy to hear that all is well with your husband.  We used to have a snow blower.  I loved using it.  Now we get our driveway plowed, but I'm still out every day shoveling, shoveling shoveling.  Spring is just around the corner!   :flowers:

Last time I heard something was around the corner was my Honeymoon in 1980, in Pompano Beach. My moms friend was taking us out to dinner and we walked because he said it was "Just around the corner" Well, 5 miles later and NOT finding the restaurant, he said again, "it's just around the corner". Need I say more??  :devil:

 :laugh:

Since Rochester is still snowed in, figured Lurkers Day was still in effect!  I started waaaaay back in 2000-- and until the last year or so still checked regularly but have gotten out of the habit of posting  Nice to see some familiar names -- Aafke and Nora!  There are so many good memories not only of the falcons but also the folks that participated on the Kodak and Yahoo boards -- and the stories we have!

Best nature around me?  We are blessed!  Ospreys, bald eagles, egrets, herons -- all of which I can see from my house.  Local birds are the usual plus some very vocal crows!  It's a beautiful place of nature and we love it.
Vandrefalk

Yes, it's so good to see some of the old names. Hope it continues!


Nora in Florida

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Oh, yes.  We have LOTS of stories!   :happy:

It is nice to see you too! We shared a lot for a long time.
greetings Aafke