You know, I thought my eyes were deceiving me - both today (Friday 9th) and yesterday?? Archer DID have food, huh? Any comments re this behaviour from the EGGS-perts???

Yep, now that egg laying is under way, the nest box will be the focus of Archer and Beauty's life for the next few months.  We'll see more meals taken there, as well as a lot more activity at the box in general.

[WanderingFalcon (Carol P.):]

WanderingFalcon (Carol P.): Dan S & I saw 3rd Pefa over dwntwn from ped. bridge.  Archer & 3rd short engagement over Lincoln Twr.  3rd definitely female. Headed north.

Link:
http://twitter.com/WanderingFalcon/statuses/11834220798

I wonder if this is the same falcon from yesterday.  She seemed pretty determined and at one point she flew directly over the TS Wings...

...But no view Main cam:

The very top of the egg is visible if you view the Main cam pic at 100%.  Look just to the left of the knot on the center top of the front edge of the nest box tray.

Could be Sabrina (RED) or Aura (Silver).

Of course I understand it could be one of them but why don't we know about this? Usually "WORD" gets around if a Juvie from Rochester is nesting some where. NO?

We do know about this.  The news was posted at Imprints last year.  Unfortunately it was right in the midst of Mariah's troubles so it may have been overlooked by some.

LOL... DK and I had the same thought!

How to confound a watcher:

Walk out of the Times Square Building in a suit, on your way to court. Notice Lord G. across the street with his glasses, baseball cap, 'noculars and camera. Stop, make eye contact, wave, then head off.

Yup, confused him I did.

Nah, I figured there couldn't be too many well-tailored people who'd want to wave at me.  Nice to meet you Mark, from across the street, as it were.  Hope your court date went well.

Thanks.  Maybe Yarak's developing a male-pattern memory...

No vest, but short brown hair under the baseball cap, with glasses.

There's an interview going on.

It was 70 degrees out, so the vest stayed in the car.  I didn't see any falcons at lunchtime, but I did have a nice long conversation/interview with Peter Iglinski from WXXI radio (he's been a fan since the Mariah/Cabot-Sirocco days).  I imagine his story will be on the news tomorrow morning (and maybe the afternoon too).  It's 1370AM, 88.5FM, or you can find them online at wxxi.org.

He got a big kick out of the stories about A&B mating on Mercury's foot.

I don't know why, but for some reason my latest falcon watch report didn't get relayed to the board, so here it is:
http://birdblog.marchlords.com/2010/03/aborted-ardor-marks-midday-peregrine.html

Now THAT is a WOW Weekend!  Thank you so much for sharing - snowies and kestrels - a great way to start my day 

Yep, "wow" was something we said more than once on the trip.

Just smashing, Jim!! I can't imagine. This is incredible!
I go owl-watching and see nothing. I always suspect they play poker on my car roof in my absence, and swoop off just in time.

  There's a lot of hit and miss with owls, it seems.  For some reason, they don't like to just sit out in the open so we can admire them. 

Too bad, I remember all the great pics of that Snowy.....was a good year.

My first Snowy pictures were in 2004, when we had that Snowy on the Charlotte and Sumerville piers that hung around for a week or so.  But my best shots were the ones I got in December 2008.

[What an exciting report, with such gorgeous photos! I've been to some of those places on winter birding trips so it was really fun reading.Dot in PA]

   What an exciting report, with such gorgeous photos! I've been to some of those places on winter birding trips so it was really fun reading.

Dot in PA

Thanks Dot.  We'll definitely be going back. It was a fantastic trip.  We had people in our group from as far away as Virginia and Florida, so you needn't be local to take a Lakeshore Nature Tour.

[Jim and Dawn,What gorgeous pictures. I loved them all. I really enjoyed the ones of the broken ice looking like broken glass. The two Canada geese and ice, the owls (so wonderful), the foxes, and the ice. Was it cold - - - of course! dumb ? on my part. Lola]

Jim and Dawn,
What gorgeous pictures.  I loved them all.  I really enjoyed the ones of the broken ice looking like broken glass.  The two Canada geese and ice, the owls (so wonderful), the foxes, and the ice.  Was it cold  -  -  -  of course! dumb ? on my part.
Lola

 

 

Thanks.  Yes, it was frigid on the first day with temps that barely got out of the single digits Fahrenheit, and well below zero in Centigrade degrees.  The other two days were a bit warmer, but February is our coldest month...

6am today

5am in february. I see a big difference in lighting

It looks to me like the earlier settings relied on a boosted ISO settting (ISO is the sensitivity of the camera's imaging sensor), whereas the current configuration may be using a wide aperture and/or long exposure combined with lower ISO.  The lower ISO results in much lower signal noise, to the extent that, while the building's floodlights are on, I can actually read the Boy Scout troop info burned into the back of the box.  It's impossible to do that with the noise in the image from February.

The new settings seem to work very well while the building's floodlights are on.  When they go off though, the image gets very dark.  Today that occurred at 06:07.  Dawn was at 06:40, and Sunrise at 07:08.  By 06:50 the image was about as good as when the floodlights were on. 

I assume the floodlights are on a simple timer-- on and off at the same times each day.  As sunrise & Dawn get earlier, we'll eventually have enough light for a good morning image regardless of whether the floodlights are on or off.  If we take the pre-dawn light level with floodlights on as an acceptable baseline, then in by April 17th the "floodlight-off" ambient light levels should match the "floodlight-on" levels.  Until then, the interval of time during which the image will be "too" dark (the "darkness gap", if you will) will get smaller and smaller.  Right now that interval is about 45 minutes.  Each day it gets shorter by a little more than a minute.  BTW, you can see the sunrise/sunset times for Rocheseter HERE.

Kenn and Shaky are still working on tweaking the camera settings, so maybe we can come up with a way to close the "darkness gap", but it'll depend on how much effort we can devote to it, and how much capability we have to control the camera's settings using the Erdmann interface.

Dawn and I brought a new dog into our family over the weekend.  You can see some pictures of our new girl in my latest blog post:
http://birdblog.marchlords.com/2010/03/say-hello-to-sasha.html

While you're there, check out the new look for my blog!