Quest has continued to stay around Prince Edward Point with frequent trips into nearby Kingston Ontario this month. Recently our friends at the Canadian Peregrine Foundation posted about Quest visiting the Kingston Harbor on January 4. Happily CPF observer Rachel McRae was able to get some pictures of Quest. We’re reprinting them here with her kind permission.

We’re working with the CPF to see if they have larger pictures they can share with us, and if we can get them we’ll bring them to you.

Quest is looking great, and both she and her transmitter seem to be going strong! CPF reporter Big Frank also let us know that workers at the Pickering Nuclear Power plant have been seeing Quest in the past few days, so she may be returning to familiar ground. Be sure to check back for updates.

Quest must be having a good time at Prince Edward Point because her transmitter data display some of the closest clustering that we’ve seen since we began tracking her in 2008. In fact, many of the locations over the past two weeks have been so close together that we thought she might have finally ditched her transmitter.

There are a few data points that are spread far enough apart to show us that she’s still moving around. But one thing we can say is that she’s not moving very far. Except for a trip to Kingston on the 26^th, she’s moved only a couple of miles. It looks like Quest has found a cozy place to stay for the winter, and that she’s content enough not to wander. Unless she decides to make another significant move– back to Pickering or the Lennox power station for instance– we may be in for a boring winter.

Beauty stopped by the nest box at the Times Square building today, and she didn’t come alone. As you can see from the picture above, she was accompanied by a male falcon as well. The pair stayed for the better part of an hour before finally flying away.

Needless to say we were all excited to see a male back in the territory, but was this Archer? Some close-in surveillance with the newly upgraded PanCam revealed that the male had no leg bands. No leg bands = no Archer. Here’s a good shot of the unidentified male taken from our high resolution Main camera:

Clearly this tiercel has no ID bands on his legs. He and Beauty and seemed pretty content, even ee-chupping to each other a couple of times.

A little before 9AM the male ducked into the nest box, and that drew a rebuke from Beauty. She kacked at the male and he left as hastily as he’d entered. He stayed nearby for a few more minutes before eventually flying away to the south. Beauty followed after him, and that’s the last we saw of the visiting tiercel.

So who was this newcomer? Was he a “one hit wonder”, just passing through, or will we see him again? We’ll keep our eyes open, and you can catch all the action on Rfalconcam’s five cameras or as it happens on our streaming video page.

No surprises for Quest. She’s been bouncing between Pickering and Prince Edward Point for the past several weeks, but the most recent few days’ locations have placed her squarely at PEP. The weather’s been pretty nasty and cold, with one of the lowest temperature sensor readings we’ve seen recorded on the 15^th, a chilly 9.65°C. Hopefully Quest is finding someplace to stay out of the wind and keep herself warm.

Our friends at the Canadian Peregrine Foundation sent us this image of a banded Peregrine that was spotted at Frenchman’s Bay, right next door to the Pickering power plant where Quest has been hanging out. The picture was taken by Denis Gauthier on the afternoon of September 12^th and reproduced here with his kind permission. Quest’s tracking data from that day places her squarely at Pickering.

Big Frank, one of the CPF’s falcon watchers, worked with Mark and Marion Nash to see if they could identify this bird. An enlargement of the picture yielded an all black band with 33/Y ID. It turns out this guy isn’t far from home. He’s Kendal, a tiercel hatched in 2009 at Toronto’s King Street nest.

We haven’t heard of any repeat sightings of young Kendal, so there’s no way of knowing whether he’s still in the area or if indeed this is the male who’s been hanging out with Quest. But if it is, it’d be another wonderful Rochester-Toronto connection in the Peregrine world. In any case, he’s one good looking bird!

A huge note of thanks to Big Frank for letting us know about Kendal, and to Denis for his great pictures, a couple more of which we’ve included below.

     

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!

As she’s done in the past, Quest threw us a curve ball. After weeks at Pickering, she suddenly decided to take a trip east to Prince Edward Point. She stayed a couple of days then returned to Pickering, but not before making a stop-over in Port Hope on the 18^th. Maybe she decided to take a flight down memory lane now that she seems to be settling down.

Rochester Falconcam team member Joyce Miller, who spent last weekend watching Quest, has sent us another couple of photographs.

As we’ve seen with other offspring, Quest looks like she’s inherited her looks from both Mariah and Kaver. We think you’ll all agree that she looks gorgeous in her adult plumage!

Quest’s latest location data are all clustered in the immediate area around the Pickering Nuclear Power plant in Pickering, Ontario Canada. Not only that, but just this past weekend she was spotted there by Rochester Falconcam watchers Joyce and MAK. They tell us that Quest was once again seen in the company of a male peregrine, and that they were both acting very comfortable with each other.

Even better, Joyce took some pictures! Here’s a few for you

And finally, a shot of Quest passing overhead. Her transmitter is clearly visible in this picture.

We’re very pleased that we’ve finally gotten some pictures of Quest to share with you, and we’re grateful for the efforts of Joyce, MAK, and all the other watchers who have made the long trip to Pickering Ontario in search of our intrepid peregrine. It seems like she’s pretty comfortable at the power plant, and if she has found a mate in this male, we may even be able to look forward to some nesting activity next year. We’ll keep our eye on Quest to see if she decides to make this her permanent home.