Quest continues her stay at the Prince Edward Point Bird Observatory, with a couple of side trips northeast to the mainland. Location data have been a little spotty. Sometimes we only get one reading in a day, and that one may not be very good, so you’ll see a couple of gaps. On the positive side, the temperature sensor on her transmitter shows that she’s keeping warm as we move into the heart of winter.

The satellite images around the bird observatory are not extremely detailed, but it seems like there must be some high structure in the area (maybe a cell phone or radio tower?) It looks like there’s some kind of artificial structure nearby, but whether it provides a hunting perch for Quest is anyone’s guess. If anyone has visited the Prince Edward Point Bird Observatory, drop us a line! We’d love to get more infomation about the lay of the land.

Beauty’s been spotted around the downtown area all winter, but today is the first time this year that we’ve seen her on the Rochester Falconcam’s cameras. As expected, our new Main Camera got a great picture of her. This is about the time of year we’d expect to see the falcons begin to make their return to the nest box, so everything seems to be on track. Or does it?

Beauty had a friend with her today. Here’s a shot of him at the left, next to the Main Cam, munching on some prey. Beauty is looking on from the perch of the nest box on the right.

Looks like Archer right? Only, it’s not. This guy doesn’t have any leg bands! In this picture you can see his left leg, and there’s clearly no band. Archer had bands on both legs, so this can’t be him.

Beauty seemed comfortable with this newcomer. Our Falconcam Archive Viewer (new for 2010!) shows her waiting patiently while the tiercel devoured his brunch. They both left the nest box shortly afterward. So, as the 2010 Falconcam season gets under way, we may have a new drama brewing here in Rochester. Where’s Archer? Is he just late returning home, or is this new tiercel going to be Beauty’s new mate? We usually get a healthy dose of drama at the Rochester Falconcam, and it looks like 2010 is not going to disappoint in that department!

Quest has been spending so much of her time in a very small area of Prince Edward Point that it’s sometimes easy to think that her transmitter might have fallen off, or worse, that she’s met with an untimely end. Fortunately, every few days she wanders away from PEP and we get some good location data to put our minds at rest. So it has been this past week, when Quest made a day trip back to the Lennox Power station. After that she went right back to her new hunting ground though. Maybe she was just stretching her wings a little?

View Quest Travels January 2010 in a larger map

We weren’t surprised to find that Quest ended January at the Prince Edward Point Wildlife Refuge. The heavy concentration of data from her transmitter shows that she hasn’t visited the Lennox Power station since the beginning of the month, preferring to spend her time among the prey-rich wetlands to the southwest. Five of the last seven days place her at the Point, and the other two (purple and black icons on the map) look like they could just be day trips.

We’re still hoping that someone at the Prince Edward Point Bird Observatory will spy Quest and send us an eyewitness report, or even some pictures. But whether we hear anything from humans at the site or not, it’s pretty clear that Quest has found herself a nice place to stay for the winter.