View Quest Travels August 1 – 9 in a larger map with a legend. Zoom in or out on the map by clicking the small + & – signs. Move it around by clicking your mouse button and dragging the map in the desired direction. Click the falcon icons for more information about each location.

August finds the intrepid Quest whiling away the days in pleasant Wesleyville and the surrounding ‘burbs. Four of the seven most recent location plots place her in close proximity to the power station there. The data leave little doubt that she’s made it her base of operations, most likely hunting from the facility’s tall smokestack.

It looks like she took an early morning jaunt over Port Hope on the 4^th. Her location at the corner of Strachan and Bramley Street South looks to be an upscale neighborhood to judge by all of the backyard swimming pools nearby. You can’t say she doesn’t have good taste! Consistent with the summer season we’re also seeing some of the highest temperature readings yet from the sensor in Quest’s transmitter.

From everything we can see, it seems she couldn’t be doing better. Now all Quest needs to do is to settle down and attract a mate for next year.

If you’ve been following us all year you remember that first Mariah and Archer, then Beauty and Archer, appeared to be making a nest site on the north side of the Midtown Plaza tower.  All of the human tenants are out of the tower and a large-scale asbestos removal project is under way now.

After the territory battle that displaced Mariah it appeared to our volunteer watchers that Archer and Beauty had settled into this location to start a nest.  Then, after a few weeks they abandoned the site and moved to the prepared nest box at the Times Square building.  We never went up to the presumed nest site at the Midtown Plaza tower because we didn’t want to stress the new pair if they were nesting, and because the building had been largely shut down.

Recently, Rochester Falconcam members Carol Phillips and Susan Conway were able to secure access to the ledge site one day before the asbestos abatement work got going.  Carol took some pictures of the ledge (view her KodakGallery album) and reported on what they found.

We were able to get up to the same floor as the failed nest site.  There were no windows from inside to view the gutter, so we walked out onto the top of the lower section of the building.  The same level as the nest site gutter.  We were able to view the gutter from the NE corner of the building looking south.  The gutter is too narrow to walk out onto.

There is no drainage from this gutter.  In fact, there are pipes that are pointed down into this gutter to drain water from the tower above.  During our torrential rain storms, this gutter would have filled with water.  In my opinion, this nest would never have never [been] successful.

The gutter itself is about 12-15 inches wide and 7-8 inches deep.

Susan and I looked for evidence of broken eggs or anything else from a Peregrine nest, but couldn’t find anything.

So, it looks like Archer and Beauty may never have laid eggs at Midtown.  If they did, the nest apparently failed and any trace of it has since been washed away.  The site doesn’t look ideal for a nest in any case, since as Carol noted there’s not much drainage, and in fact the gutter might have collected rainwater from other parts of the building.

It’s not unusual for the nest of a new Peregrine pair to fail.  We’ve also seen many cases in which Peregrines have made poor choices for nest sites.  We’re glad that Archer and Beauty availed themselves of the artificial nest box at Times Square.  It will provide an excellent nest, protected from too much wind, rain and sun.  We’re hopeful that next year we’ll see them lay their first clutch of eggs in Rochester.

A few days ago we told you we’d be rolling out a new feature at the Rochester Falconcam. We’re pleased to announce the addition of a Forum to our site! The Rochester Falconcam Forum will allow our fans from all over the world to discuss the latest news about the Rochester falcons as well as to provide the opportunity to participate in a global community like never before. To make it easy to find we’ve added a link to the Forum on the navigation bar at the top of the Falconcam page.

At the Forum you can:

• Use a variety of CATEGORIES, BOARDS and TOPICS to find just the right place to post your thoughts. Check out the introduction to the forum for more information.
• Include pictures with built-in thumbnails, attach files to your posts, and use tons of smilies (AKA emoticons)
• View a summary of previous posts to make it easier to write replies
• See your posted messages instantly
• Easily find new discussions that have been posted since your last visit
• Upload your own picture or Avatar to identify yourself to other posters
• Use the built-in Chat feature to exchange messages with other Forum members in real time. See other members’ Chat status as soon as you logon.
• Send private messages to Forum members
• Build your posting “street cred” by progressing from Egg to Eyas, Juvie, Tiercel and finally to Falcon status!
• Flag favorite topics so that you can be notified when new posts are added
• Easily post Forum information on Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites
• And much more!

Join the thousands of Rochester Falconcam fans at the Forum and check it out! Registering takes only a few minutes, and we think you’re going to appreciate how much more convenient it will be to get news and discuss the many topics of interest to our diverse community.

View Quest Travels July 18 – 28 in a larger map with a legend. Zoom in or out on the map by clicking the small + & – signs. Move it around by clicking your mouse button and dragging the map in the desired direction. Click the falcon icons for more information about each location.

A lack of good signals from Quest’s transmitter have stretched out our latest round of locations, but it seems that there’s no need to worry. As we have seen for the past several weeks she’s staying put in the Wesleyville-Port Hope area. There are no real surprises in the data, though an odd coincidence placed two consecutive daily readings in exactly the same spot on the 25^th and 26^th. Quest got back to moving around soon enough though, so she seems to be doing fine.

We sent a note off to our friends at the Canadian Peregrine Foundation to see if the old hack box at the Wesleyville power station is still in place. We haven’t received a reply yet, but they’re busy folks up there and I’m sure we’ll hear back as soon as Mark Nash has a few minutes to catch up on his email! Until then Quest is staying in her groove so we’re content that all appears to be well.

Something new is coming to the Rochester Falconcam! We’ve been working on it for a while now, and this Saturday, August 1^st we’ll unveil a feature that we think you’re all going to enjoy.

And while you’re waiting for the big event, keep up with Quest by checking out the map of her latest locations.

On an unrelated note… being sharp-eyed falcon fans, you’ve probably noticed that the Falconcam’s high-resolution Main camera has been “stuck” for over a week. We’ve been working on the problem but to date we haven’t had much success. We have a couple more things to try, but it’s possible the fault lies in a problem with the power connection. If we can’t fix it from inside the Times Square building we may have to go the rest of the year without the Main Camera. Even though Archer and Beauty seem pretty comfortable here, they’re a new pair in town. We don’t want to risk stressing them by going out to the nest box until they (presumably) leave later this year. We’ll still have the four others though, so we’ll be able to keep an eye on any activity in the box.

Our friends at Birdorable have released a unique design to honor Rochester’s newest Peregrine pair, Archer and Beauty! Their stylized bird prints are a big hit, and we really like the vintage look that Birdorable came up with for Archer and Beauty. Beauty’s image even features her hallmark darker salmon breast coloring.

The design is available on a variety of merchandise including clothes, hats and items for home and office. Birdorable designs make great gifts, and they’re perfect for everyday use too. We’re grateful to Amy and Arthur at Birdorable for their continuing partnership with the Rochester Falconcam. Best of all, a portion of the proceeds from sales of all their Falconcam-themed merchandise supports our program.

Order your Archer and Beauty Birdorable items today. It’s a great way to welcome these new falcons to Rochester!

View Quest Travels July 7 – July 16 in a larger map with a legend. Zoom in or out on the map by clicking the small + & – signs. Move it around by clicking your mouse button and dragging the map in the desired direction. Click the falcon icons for more information about each location.

Quest continues her stay on the north shore of Lake Ontario. Her movements indicate a growing familiarity with the area, and unless something changes, it seems like she’ll be staying put for the summer. You keep up with her daily movements at our Quest’s Week map page!

View Quest Travels June 27 – July 6 in a larger map with a legend. Zoom in or out on the map by clicking the small + & – signs. Move it around by clicking your mouse button and dragging the map in the desired direction. Click the falcon icons for more information about each location.

Quest seems happy to stay on the coast near Port Hope, due north across Lake Ontario from Lyndonville, New York (Rochester area birders will recognize Lyndonville as the place where a Northern Hawk Owl made an appearance a few years ago). She continues to roam along a 10 mile (16km) stretch of southern Ontario province from Port Granby to Port Hope, with much of her activity centered on an unused power plant in Wesleyville. A smokestack there provides an unequaled view of the surroundings and doubtless makes an excellent hunting perch for her. On July 6 she visited a residential street in Port Hope, but for the most part she continues to enjoy life on the north shore of Lake Ontario. We’d love to hear any reports from local birders about how Quest is doing, so if anyone from the Wesleyville & Port Hope areas is reading this, let us know!

Freedom in 2008. Photo courtesy of Doug Garbutt
Here in the US we’re celebrating the birth of our nation plus 233 years with picnics, parades and fireworks displays. On this day of freedom we thought we’d take a look back at one of our favorite falcons.

Freedom was the first tiercel hatched from the pairing of Mariah and Kaver back in 2002. In 2005 members of the Kodak Birdcam team visited him at his new home at the Archer Daniels Midland plant in Colborne, Ontario Canada. The following year Freedom had a tiercel of his own, Archer. This year Archer made his way to Rochester, where he’s taken his place as our new resident male. So in a way, things have come full circle.

So Mariah gave us Freedom, and Freedom gave us Archer. Now you can have a little bit of Freedom at your fingertips! Rochester Falconcam team member Jim Pisello put together this ringtone featuring Freedom’s territorial call. Just save the file on your computer then add it to your phone (if you don’t know how to do that contact your cellular/mobile service provider for assistance).

We’d like to leave you with one of our favorite pictures of Freedom. Back when he was a fledgling one of his fans at Kodak snapped a picture of him on the tower. We think it captures the spirit of Independence Day perfectly.

We appreciate all of the support we’ve received over the years from our viewers around the globe. If you’re a fan of Archer, Beauty and Mariah, let us know!

Sign our guestbook and add your location to the map of Rochester Falconcam fans. Just click the “Sign this guestbook” button above or click the link on the right side of the page under “Guestbook”.