Recently the Rfalconcam’s Merchandising team embarked on an effort to update the logo we use on our website. Our current logo features Kaver in a stylized egg. It has served us well since the Genesee Valley Audubon Society took over the falconcam from Kodak back in 2007. We know that many of our watchers are very fond of the logo, and we intend to retire it with all the honor it is due. A new logo will help us to update our look as we move into 2011 with new cameras and a new and improved web experience.

Several weeks ago we put out a call to graphic designers to submit their ideas for a new logo. Using the popular Crowdspring website to manage the process, we received over 100 submissions that literally covered the spectum of design, color and content. We want to thank all of the artists and designers for their very engaging submissions!

Whittling down the list of submissions was a difficult task. We listened to the feedback from the Rochester Falconcam community, and that feedback figured prominently in our deliberations. After much discussion and wrangling, the Merchandise Committee has settled on two logo designs.

A couple of notes about the logos… oftentimes the designers included sample banners or other graphical elements in their submissions to demonstrate how their logo might work. The submission on the right includes such a banner at the top. This banner is for illustration only; it’s not the banner that we’ll be using and it’s not part of the submission. When you’re evaluating the choices, please concentrate on the logo itself, not on backgrounds or other style elements that may also appear in the picture.

Also, you can get a larger image of the logo by hovering your mouse over the upper right corner of each one. When you see a little magnifying glass icon appear, click it to open a larger view of the image. If the image runs off the top of the screen just move your mouse onto it, then click and drag it to view the whole thing. Close the large image by clicking the “X” in the upper right corner.

Now we’d like your help to choose our new logo! Click the logo images above to go to Crowdspring’s website. There you can view both of the logo finalists. You can assign a rating to each one, ranging from one to five stars. You can also leave comments or feedback about the designs. We hope you’ll keep your comments constructive, as the designers clearly put a lot of time and effort into their submissions. We’ll keep the voting open through Sunday, December 5th. After that, we’ll reveal the winner of the voting and adopt that design as the new Rochester Falconcam logo. So head on over to Crowdspring and let us know what you think!

Rfalconcam | Promote Your Page Too

For a couple of years now the Rochester Falconcam has had a presence on the Facebook social networking site, including a personal page for “Jess” and a Rochester Falconcam group. We used those pages to keep Facebook readers up to date on our activities.

Now we’ve taken our Facebook presence to a new level with the opening of the Rfalconcam page on Facebook. The page allows us to have a single place to post news and other information about both the falcons and the falconcam program. It also raises our profile as a non-profit organization. That can be helpful for seeking grants and other kinds of funding.

You can help us gain exposure on Facebook. If you’re a Facebook user, click the link above to go to the Rfalconcam page, then click the “Like” button at the top of the screen to become a fan. The more fans we get, the better, so be sure to tell all your Facebook friends about us too!

The latest t-shirt design available in the Rochester Falconcam Zazzle store comes to us courtesy of Dale Pesmen. Besides being a long-time fan of the Rochester falcons, Dale is quite the artist. Her image of a peregrine eyas playing with a feather is a real keeper, perfect for any falcon lover!

At the Rochester Falconcam Zazzle store you can order the eyas on a white or black t-shirt, with a choice of red, yellow or blue feather. You’ll be helping to maintain the Rochester Falconcam with your purchase, and you can show off the work of a very talented artist at the same time. So head on over to Zazzle or one of our other stores for all of your Rochester Falconcam merchandise needs!

Jemison took her first flight Saturday morning, then spent the weekend making occasional, short forays around the Times Square building. Yesterday she took her first extended flight, going about half a block before turning back and making a competent landing at the nest box.

Callidora, much larger and heavier than her smaller sibling, did her share of flapping and wing practice, but couldn’t quite make the leap. That is, until this afternoon, when she too made her maiden flight. According to watchers on the ground, she tried to follow Jemison across a small gap at the top of the building, but ended up curving away from Times Square. She misjudged her return, bumping into the side of the building, but started flapping again and made a soft landing on the flat roof of the nearby Wilder Building, which is just across Exchange Street. She’s been sitting there for a few hours now, hopping along the rooftop. We’ve had Camera 1 trained on her all evening, and she looks no worse for wear. If Callidora doesn’t make it back to the nest box tonight, she’ll be perfectly safe on top of the Wilder building. Archer and Beauty know where she is, and it’ll be easy for them to feed her if she stays. Eventually she’ll make her way back to the nest box, and we have watchers on the ground just in case she takes a bad turn.

Both of the fledglings have made pretty conventional flights. The watchers have a little adjusting to do, being in a downtown environment for the first time, but so far the Times Square building at the corner of Broad and Exchange Streets in downtown Rochester has turned out to be a pretty good place to raise young falcons.

If you’ve been keeping up with the Rochester Falconcam, you already know that Callidora and Jemison have been busy exercising their wings and running around outside the nest box. They haven’t taken flight yet, but at the rate they’re going, those first flights could happen at any time.

This year, even more than in the past, we’re going to need lots of eyes on these two falcons when they begin flying. We don’t have the luxury of big open spaces as we did at Kodak. In downtown Rochester there are plenty of buildings for the young falcons to land on, but those same buildings make it hard to keep the falcons in sight while they’re flying. The solution to that problem is to have plenty of people stationed near the Times Square building on street corners and bridges, so that we can keep them in view when they do decide to “take the plunge”.

The Genesee Valley Audubon Society held an orientation meeting for fledge watchers last week, but if you didn’t make it to that meeting, you can still join the fledge watch. We’ve posted complete details over at our FalconWatch blog, but to make it easy you can just CLICK HERE to get started.

Callidora and Jemison could really use your help, at least until they get used to their wings, and making decent landings. Those skills usually take one to two weeks to learn, but the organized Fledge Watch is scheduled for the next 3 weeks (it actually started last Monday, so we’re getting a late start!). So if you ever wanted to get out and see these marvels of nature in person, you couldn’t choose a better time than now. Come join the fun!

In case you haven’t heard the news yet, our two eyases will be banded tomorrow morning by wildlife officials from the New York State Dept. of Environmental Conservation. Here are a few things you should know.

The banding event will begin around 10:00 AM Rochester time. It shouldn’t take more than an hour to conclude. Local fans and birders are invited to gather at the corner of Broad and Exchange Streets in the city. From there you should have a front row seat for all of the flying we anticipate from Archer and Beauty as they defend their nest box and eyases during the banding process. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to see the actual banding of the eyases from the street, and due to space considerations and other factors, the number of people who will be present at the banding will be limited to only a few invited guests. Therefore you may want to consider Option B.

What’s Option B? Why, it’s to watch the banding LIVE from the comfort of your home, office or wherever you have a computer and an Internet connection. We’ll be broadcasting a live video stream during the banding event. Here are a few things you should know.

• The official source of information during banding will be the Rfalconcam Now board. Look for a Banding Day 2010 topic to appear around 10 AM EDT (Rochester time). One of our Forum moderators will post comments to the Banding Day 2010 topic throughout the process. To make the commentary easier to follow, you will not be able to post to the Rfalconcam Now board during this time. However, feel free to post to the other boards and chat areas.
• There will be streaming video from the banding room during the banding, but there will not be streaming video from the nest box. To watch the video, go to Rfalconcam’s Streaming Video page
• Rfalconcam’s famous high-quality pictures will continue to update throughout the banding event. Pictures from inside the banding room will appear on Camera 4. You will be able to view the pictures on Rfalconcam’s View All Cameras page or in the Archive Viewer

You can ensure that you don’t miss a thing by opening 3 browser windows on your computer:
Rfalconcam Now
Rfalconcam’s Streaming Video,
Rfalconcam’s View All Cameras

Be sure to refresh the Rfalconcam Now page every few minutes to see new posts.

Twitter users will also be able to receive the latest information by following RfalconcamNow.

We hope you’ll join us tomorrow for another exciting banding day event!

We’ve only been broadcasting our live video stream for a couple of weeks, but already we’ve risen to the top of the heap on Ustream. Ustream.tv is the website that hosts the live video stream from the Rochester Falconcam. It has become the most viewed on a daily, weekly and monthly basis, and we’re ranked the number 3 falcon cam since Ustream began service.

Turns out we’re not the only falcon webcam that’s streaming video. If you search Ustream you’ll find about 30 webcams dedicated to falcons. When you consider that some of these other falcon webcam sites have been operating for years, that’s something worth cheering about.

The fans of the Rochester Falconcam are key to our success, and we want to thank each of you for tuning in to see Archer, Beauty and the new eyases. By making us the most-viewed live falcon webcam the Rochester Falconcam is at the top of Ustream search results. That means new viewers are more likely to find us and tune in as well. Nothing succeeds like success, so give yourselves a big hand and keep watching!

Sometime during the night it seems that Beauty disposed of the remaining unhatched egg. Either she decided it was non-viable, or it became damaged. She may have consumed it or just removed it from the nest. We’re not exactly sure what happened to it, since the actual disposal wasn’t captured on any of our cameras.

It’s not unusual for first-time Peregrine parents to have some of their eggs fail to hatch. 2002 was the first year that Mariah and Kaver were together. Mariah laid four eggs that year but only two hatched.

We’d have welcomed three eyases, but for new parents, two is an excellent number. It gives Archer and Beauty an opportunity to hone their parenting skills. The basics come naturally to them; caring for young is instinctual. But like anything else, they’ll get better with practice. We’re already seeing Archer being more consistent with bringing food to Beauty, and he’s looking a little more comfortable keeping the eyases warm while Beauty gets out for a little hunting and wing stretching of her own. Beauty is doing a great job of feeding the eyases, and with just two hungry mouths to feed, it’s likely both of the young falcons will get plenty of food.

The two newly hatched eyases passed their first uneventful night tucked beneath Beauty for warmth and protection from the elements. The eyases can go for about a day before they need a meal, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t hungry. In fact, they’re pretty much hungry all the time! So you’re likely to see a lot of feeding going on.

Our high-resolution Main camera caught some great pictures of the second feeding this morning, which took place at 10AM local time (the first happened five hours earlier). In the photo above you can see typical feeding behavior. Both eyases have their bills open in anticipation of getting fed. Archer delivered the food to Beauty and she took it into the nest box. She ripped small pieces of the prey (an unidentified small gray bird) and fed them to each of the eyases until they had enough.

How did Beauty know she’d fed them enough? Because the sated eyases lose interest in more food. They stop begging and lay down for an after-meal nap. Watch for this pattern to repeat itself as many as five or six times a day. By the time the eyases are five days old they’ll have doubled in size! That takes a lot of food, delivered over many feedings.

Now that we have a live video feed, it’s easier than ever to see how a feeding happens. Tune in if you haven’t checked it out yet, and let us know what you think.

Even more viewers (nearly 600!) watched Beauty & Archer’s second egg hatch just after 7PM this evening. The sound of the eyas making the final breakthrough was transmitted very clearly, and Beauty was perfectly positioned in the nest box to give everyone viewing our new Live Video Stream a front row seat.

The third egg could hatch later tonight, or it might take as much as another 24 to 48 hours. Watch along with us!

By the way, if you didn’t get to see the hatchings, here are the replays:
First Hatch
Second Hatch

We’ll also put the highlights up on the Rochester Falconcam channel at YouTube.