Even before we knew Unity’s identity, Rochester Falconcam team member Carol Phillips was busy working with our good friends at Kodak to get access to the site for our crack team of watchers. Recently her persistence paid big dividends as Kodak invited a few observers to take a closer look. Falconcam team members Joyce Miller, Lou Capuano and Jim Pisello accompanied Carol to the power plant at Kodak Park’s Weiland Road location for a brief tour of the facility and our closest look yet at the site Unity has chosen for her nest this year.
Bruce Moyer, from Kodak Corporate Security met everyone at the gate and led them inside. The power plant burns coal and oil to produce heat and generate electric power for many of the buildings throughout the Eastman Business Park complex. Kodak owns the facility, but it is operated by Duke Energy.
Inside the team met Duke Energy’s Bernie and Ted, the plant managers, and geared up with hard hats, safety glasses and hearing protection. A ride up a freight elevator ended at the top floor where all the excess heat from the steam turbines made for a sauna-like experience. Ted, who had a previous life as a biologist, led the group onto the roof overlooking the nest area. From there, two eggs were plainly visible in the substrate on the protected ledge. The material on the ledge looks to be pigeon droppings, deposited over many years. Ted claimed the pigeon population had dwindled even before Unity’s arrival last year, and the team saw only a handful of birds while they were on site. Unity had put in an appearance earlier with an overhead fly-by that ended with her disappearing around the back side of the plant. Some more of the pictures from the tour, taken by Lou and Jim, can be seen in the slideshow below.
With two eggs in the scrape, could a third be in the works? The plant operators noted that the last egg was laid many days ago, so it doesn’t seem likely that Unity will be laying another. And though the nest is not monitored actively, it was clear from interviewing the Duke Energy folks that Unity is not spending a great deal of time on the eggs. That’s not the behavior you’d expect for a falcon that’s in “hard” incubation mode.
So what does that mean? Given Unity’s young age and the fact that this is her first clutch, it’s possible that these eggs won’t hatch. It’s not all that unusual for a falcon’s first clutch to fail, and Unity is under some stresses which might contribute to a brooding failure. Her mate, Archer, is not around as much as he should be, since he’s spending a great deal of his time at his “primary” nest site with Beauty. That alone may mean that Unity has to spend a lot of time off the nest in order to feed herself, defend her territory, and so on. According to some reports from our watchers, she’s not showing too much interest in brooding, either. That could be a symptom, or a result of the stresses in her environment.
The folks from Kodak and Duke Energy are enthusiastic about having a falcon family at their site though, and they’ve generously offered their assistance in keeping an eye on things. Since the site isn’t monitored nearly as closely as at Times Square, it’s possible there’s more activity going on there than we realize.
The Rochester Falconcam wants to extend our gratitude and thanks to Bruce Moyer and all the folks at Kodak, who continue to be terrific partners, and to Ted, Bernie, and all of the falcon fans at Duke Energy for their help and hospitality. We’re looking forward to seeing what happens at this site with Rochester’s newest Peregrine, Unity.
