Just in time for the wearin’ of the green!

Our happy excited watchers– Both online and in person in downtown Rochester– delivered the news everyone has been waiting to hear. It seems Archer decided that the city’s St Patrick’s Day parade was the perfect time to fly back home, but we didn’t get our first pictures of him and his identifying leg bands (not to mention that telltale white feather tip on his right wing) until shortly after 2PM.

He and Beauty wasted no time and got right down to the business at hand, renewing their pair bond through some ritual bowing and sharing of food. Watcher Carol P reported seeing two falcons eating on the Kodak tower yesterday morning. Since then, both have been showing up at the Times Square nest box. They were also observed flying together near the Times Square building. All of these are typical signs of courtship that we’d expect to see in a pair of peregrines getting ready for a new season.

You can join in the virtual falcon watch yourself with the Rochester Falconcam’s five cameras at Times Square. Catch all the action live on our streaming video page, or even take control of our famous PanCam for a personalized falcon watching experience!

What of the tiercel who’s been keeping Beauty company since the year began? Our local watchers dubbed him “Mr. T”. He paid a visit to the nest box as recently as Friday afternoon on the 11^th. Our watchers will keep a close eye on things downtown, just in case Archer and the “new guy” decide to mix it up. There’s another Peregrine a few miles north of the Times Square at one of the buildings in Kodak Park. She’s been without a mate all year, so if Mr. T wants to head toward the lake he might find a willing partner there. That would be a win-win for Peregrines in Rochester.

Archer’s arrival comes about a week earlier than his 2010 debut in Rochester. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything, but it will be interesting to see how his arrival time compares from year to year– assuming he continues coming back. One thing you can be sure of, is that we’ll be keeping our eyes glued to the skies in Rochester now that Mariah and Kaver’s grandson is back in town!

With spring approaching it won’t be long before falcons are once again moving in and out of the nest box and hanging around the buildings surrounding Times Square. Today we’re introducing a new feature to the Rochester falconcam that we think you’re really going to enjoy. For a small donation via PayPal or credit/debit card, you can control the PanCam! Control is available in ten-minute blocks, up to a full 30 minutes at a time! We are asking only 50 cents per minute during our trial period. After that, the price will rise to $1.

By using PayPal or credit card, you will be able to take control of the camera in as little as 10 minutes after payment is made. No need to wait days or weeks for a check to clear. After your payment has been registered, you’ll be able to move Camera 1 to any of 21 preset positions and zoom out or in, magnifying the image by up to 21 times normal!

Here’s how it works…

1. After opening a new window in your internet browser, go to our website http://rfalconcam.com and select Control Camera from the CAMERAS tab. Another window will pop up that lets you either log in to take control of the camera or reserve a time to take control.

2. Since this will be your first visit, you will want to click on Reserve time on a camera.

3. When the reservation page is displayed, Click on the Book button.

4. Select a date, start time and end time. The start and end times must be 10, 20, or 30 minutes apart. The green spaces on the calendar are times that are available. Red spaces denote previously reserved slots.

5. Click the Continue button to go to the details page where you can review and modify your reservation. You will also see the total price for your reservation here.

6. Click Continue to go to the Customer Information page. Enter your name and contact information. Your Rfalconcam Forum username is optional, and you don’t need to be a forum member to participate.

7. Click on Continue to go to the confirmation page where you will confirm your reservation. Be sure to click on the Terms & Conditions check box!

8. Click on the Book button to confirm the reservation. Your confirmation code will be displayed. (It will also be emailed to you.) Don’t lose it! You will need it to gain access to the camera.

9. Click on the Pay Now button to pay for your reservation. The PayPal payment page will open in a new window.

10. Follow the directions on the PayPal page. You can pay using your PayPal account, or if you don’t have one, pay using a credit or debit card.

11. Close the PayPal window when you are done.

12. Close the Reserve Camera window.

You will receive a confirmation email which also contains instructions for controlling the camera. Do yourself a favor and READ THE INSTRUCTIONS NOW. They’ll be repeated when you take control of the camera, but by then you’ll be reading during your control time. If you want to avoid paying for the privilege of learning how to move the camera, take advantage of the instructions in the email.

A few minutes before your reservation time arrives:
1. Go to http://rfalconcam.com and select Streaming Video from the CAMERAS tab so you will be able to see where Camera 1 is currently pointed.

2. Select Control Camera from the CAMERAS tab.

3. This time, enter your email address and confirmation code, then click the Take Control button. The clock is ticking, and you’re in control!

4. If you didn’t read the instructions in the confirmation email that you received when you made your reservation, you’ll see them again here. They explain how to control the camera and what to expect. However, it is a good idea to read them in the email before you get to this point because you will be using time that could be spent controlling the camera.

5. When you are ready to control the camera, click on Take control of the camera now.

6. The control panel will appear, and now you can start moving and zooming the camera.

7. When your time is up, the control panel will close and you will be given the option to control the camera again or quit.

We hope you’ll enjoy this exciting new service. If you’ve ever wanted to see what it’s like to to follow a mobile falcon or fledgling in real time, this is your chance! And you can rest easy in the knowledge that all of the proceeds from your camera control time are going to support the Rochester Falconcam operations.

Our search for a new logo has come to an end. The voting was close all the way through the contest, and it was a nail-biter right up to the final minutes. But after all the votes were counted, one design came out on top.

We want to thank everyone who took the time to review both of the design finalists and to cast a vote for your favorite. Now the Rochester Falconcam is happy to reveal our new logo!

You’ll be seeing the new logo on our website in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!

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!