Fledge Watch- Paul Reinhardt- Wednesday June 27, 5:00-9:00 am
When I arrived for my “official watch” at 5:15 am Dan was in his chair in the parking lot as usual. I first noticed the infamous headless pigeon was still in the parking lot from last night. (in Lisa’s report 6/26). Dan updated to the whereabouts of all the 4 juvies and the 2 adults–two juvies were on the Kodak tower and two were on the smokestacks, Mariah was on the launchpad, Kaver on the North smokestack. He also informed me that he was going to take his position on the bridge tomorrow because they are getting closer to flying over the gorge. Mike arrives shortly thereafter.
At 5:45 Mariah entices the juvies to fly by taking off from her perch and flying around the tower with 3 juvies in host pursuit. Because of the loud kaaking by the juvies and the nature of the pursuit, we speculated that she may be carrying food but we couldn’t spot it. One juvie broke off and landed on the North side of the tower out of sight (possible food exchange). Mariah headed out over the gorge with the other two juvies flying strongly behind her. Mariah lands on the High Falls Business Center elevator shaft.
Then something unusual happened. As Mike was on the bridge, Sacajawea landed on the bridge on one of the benches about 20 feet from him. He was amazed!!
His excitement grew and Sacajawea hopped onto the bridge railing. But the astonishing incident is a robin land on the same railing next to Sacajawea within inches!! Sacajawea did nothing but look at the robin with curiosity!! Mike took an awesome picture of the robin and Sacajawea together.
Carol arrived within the parameter to qualify for the 5:00 am club. At that point she and I joined Mike on the bridge and he showed us the picture and described the “close encounter” of Sacie. We were able to locate and ID all 4 juvies. Linn was on the Center stack, Sacie on the southeast corner of Jimmie Macks, Ananta on the High Falls Bus. Ctr. elevator shaft, and Grace on the Southeast corner of the closet Bee Bee building. Now, the were in great view with the naked eye. Instead of 15-20 stories high, Sacie and Grace were 30 or so yards away. Spectacular!
Jean, Cathy, Lisa, Larry and Dan joined us on the bridge. Grace and Ananta put on a show for us over the gorge by playing talon tag with Ananta putting some eye-popping maneuvers to tag Grace right over us. Full vertical dives! “Enough of this” is shat I speculate Mariah thought. She proceeded to put on an extended flying show for the juvies and us. Mariah took off from on of the stacks on a dive full speed right over us into the gorge and headed to the east side by the brewery chasing and scattering pigeons near the building. She banked and headed toward the falls where we lost her because of the position of the sun and the mist from the falls. In a flash she was speeding our way. She flew right under the bridge (so close to us), came out the south side and proceeded to chase a crow below the stacks near the river bank. Again she banked and doubled back heading south under the bridge (again right below us) and chased a crow off by the west bank of the river. Mariah may not be out of breath yet but we all were!! “Now girls, that is how you do it!” Just as we finished comparing what we believe she was doing (flying and hunting lessons was the major opinion), she took off from the center stack on a stoop toward the falls and returned without a catch to the High Falls stack. How cool is it to have her go into a full stoop so close to us!! And those flying maneuvers. She just a great flyer. These fling demos took place between 6:45 and 7:15.
Around 7:30 Mariah and 2 juvies fly around the Kodak tower with Mariah performing air acrobatics and the juvies playing talon tag. For the next two hours the flying games continued with 2, sometimes 3 juvies playing talon tag, sometimes chasing Mariah and sometimes chasing Kaver.
