I went out right from work, too early for most of the folks so I sat in the shade in the parking lot for a while, scanning for quiet juvie falcons. 2 were easily visible sitting on the ledge on the SE corner of the 17th floor. Another one with her back to me was more difficult, even though she was just one floor below and one window over. I couldn’t find the forth, but wasn’t worried. Brian soon joined me as the juvies came to life.

First one, then another, flew off – then there were 3 in the air. I couldn’t tell if all 3 were juvies or if there was an adult – it turns out it was an adult and she had some food with her. She tried for a food drop and one of the juvies got it! The one with the food flew back to the tower with her prize.

About 15 minutes later, after much flying between the tower and the stack, we saw a juvie leave the stack and fly toward the gorge, Mariah was on her way in again with food! As the juvie chased and just about caught up with her, Mariah dropped the food just in front of the juvie…. WHO MISSED IT! Brian and I watched in dismay as a headless pigeon dropped to the ground, in a very small parking lot at the corner of two streets – now these streets aren’t as busy as the ones in front of Kodak, but a car goes by every couple of minutes and there’s a lot of foot traffic. Mariah landed on a building across the street, and to our surprise even attempted to swoop on it to try and get it back, but no luck.

Brian and I took off at a run to attempt to protect the spot if need be, and as we watched, the juvie came off the building above the food – she went to ground and it looked as if she was attempting to eat it. Luckily she got scared off and flew safely to another building, clearly frustrated and hungry. At that point, Brian decided that although we don’t like to interfere at all, that the pigeon was too much of a temptation in a dangerous spot, so he went over and picked it up (eewwww…) and brought it into the almost empty kodak lot (making sure that Mariah was looking at him then threw the pigeon), so that it was safely behind guardrails, and we moved back as far away from it as we could.

I should mention that at this point, the 3 juvies not on the tower were all kakking their heads off, as was Mariah once in a while. They were mad, they were hungry and impatient, and they were very vocal about it. But at least we knew where they all were: One on the tower (happily fed and laying down), one (Grace) on the catwalk of the middle stack with Kaver, one (Linn) on top of the BeeBee Station building (where the stacks are) and eventually one (Sacajawea) on a lightpost close to the lost meal. Sacajawea made a few more low flights over the food while I was there, and at one point bonked into a lightpole (but she recovered well, and flew away), and finally went to the tower.

And that’s where they all were when I left – Watchers who joined while this was going on include Lisa McK and Kathy O, and quite a number of folks from Kodak who were interested in what was going on. I can’t wait to read Lisa’s report and find out what happens to the pigeon

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 26th, 2007 at 7:30 PM and is filed under Fledge Watch Reports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.