No doubt wondering who's going to shovel out all that snow from her front yard...

Well Owl be....what a great weekend Jim. Amazing pics. Have you gone back in search of the Snowy at the Pier lately?

I've been monitoring a local birding email list for possible sightings but so far I haven't heard of any Snowys around Rochester or at the pier.

Dawn and I took a trip north of the border to look for winter owls last week. We weren't disappointed.  I've posted an extensive write-up of our long weekend over at Peregrinations.  Read about it and check out dozens of pictures here.
http://marchlords.com/birdblog/2010/02/six-owl-weekend-up-north.html

What is that? At first I thought it was a pigeon.

Maybe it's the Cooper's Hawk that had been dogging Beauty recently.  Its feet look raptor-like, with talons, but not as big as a Peregrine's.  Size didn't quite look large enough either when we had the wider angle view from the PanCam.

Does anyone have a picture of it, for those of us that aren't familiar with the big log (wasn't that a Led Zep song)?

Yup..it's a LZ song. 

Actually it's a Robert Plant song, from The Principle of Moments album (one of my favorites)

I've updated my blog with a report on our work to upgrade the Main camera at the Times Square building this morning.  Besides the work (it's its own reward, you know), we got to see Beauty in all her, um, beauty.  Read about it here:

http://marchlords.com/birdblog/2010/01/beauty-shows-up-for-new-mega-main-cam.html

[Yay!! That's 4 days in a row! Glad you got to see her since you were busy with ambulance duty on the weekend. Nice to know that Mariah is hanging around, even if they are brief sightings. Joyce]

Yay!! That's 4 days in a row!  Glad you got to see her since you were busy with ambulance duty on the weekend.  Nice to know that Mariah is hanging around, even if they are brief sightings.

Joyce

Me too!  Dana joined me at the bottom of the hour and Dan Stiehler showed up just about 1PM.  Dana and I got to watch Mariah chase after a pigeon, though she wasn't successful.  Mostly she just sat at the apex of a glass pyramid at the center of the mall.  Lighting wasn't the greatest but here are a few pictures.

It appears that the beech tree in our front yard may have developed Beech Scale.  I did some research online and in some places they recommend reporting any infestation to the state's dept. of natural resources (NY DEC for us).  I went to the DEC website but couldn't find anything about reporting Beech Scale.

Has anyone had any experience dealing with Beech Scale?  Any idea how best to deal with it?

I have to think that something as minor as an inaccessible nest site wouldn't dissuade one of Mariah's daughters from finding another nest site.  Ihteram is no doubt busy carrying on the lineage; we humans just haven't caught up with her yet.

Great news!  We've updated Imprints.

Too bad we haven't heard anything more about Ihteram since she was unceremoniously prevented from nesting at the St. Joseph's Cathederal site 

This might have already been answered on the KFalconCam board, but might as well ask again...has CPF/Mark Nash been notified that Quest is there?

Judi

He has.  I wrote him several weeks ago to let him know and to see if the hack box is still on the smokestack.  Unfortunately no answer from him yet.  I know he's busy though and his email is usually in some state of backlog, so patience is the watchword, though maybe I'll send a follow-up note just in case the original got buried in a queue somewhere...

Guess I'm greedy, but I'd love to see pictures of her.  Maybe we'll get really lucky and some good person will do that and let us know. 

Not greedy... I'd love to see some too.  And since she's been roaming in populated areas I'm really hoping some nice falcon-loving photographer up there in Port Hope will get out and snap a few shots.  I'm going through falcon photographer withdrawal this year myself 

Tessa, who's fourteen years old this year


Five-year young Quest, barely past his puppy stage!

Boy, your bird has the coloring and look of a falcon.  Here are a couple photos of a merlin with the same tail markings.  I think your first guess might be correct.  Perhaps the beak was damaged with the impact.   Based on the weeds in concrete, the size comparison is appropriate for a merlin as well.

 

Yep, I was thinking Merlin as well...

Here's some of the terra cotta tiles they discussed in the article.  I walked by a bunch of them when I was moving between buildings and grabbed a quick shot of them with my cellphone camera.