Mariah & Kaver’s Family – Doing Just Fine

I stopped out this evening for a couple of hours. All of the action was at the RGE station and Kodak tower area. We had a couple of food transfers and had a good laugh at Sacajawea, who showed that she doesn’t believe in leaving any food on the table. Here are the pics.

Lou

Watchers included Dan S, Jeanne, Mike, Kathy G and Dawn.

We had lots of talon tag over the BeeBee station power plant, over the river, in front of the gorge and over the river. It was imply not possible to track which juvies were involved when. Suffice to say that Dan S reported having all four juvies this morning, so all are accounted for. The talon tag continues to improve in skill and navigation. The juvies are much better at stalling in mid-air and then continuing their flight. We were close enough to often see the talons come out during the tag, and see juvies invert and recover.
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At around 5:30 tonight, I arrived at the Kodak visitor parking lot to find Carol P. and Susan C. observing two of the juveniles eating on the roof of the High Falls office building. Another soon flew in from somewhere on the BeeBee Station. Two of these were identified as Ananta and Linn. Mariah was watching from the catwalk of the High Falls smokestack. Soon Linn flew, with food, to the northernmost BeeBee Station building, landing next to another of her sisters, I think Grace.
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Today’s Fledge Watch was very enjoyable. Lots of sunshine, blue skies and flying by our favorite Falcon family. Check out my Kodak EasyShare Gallery Album of pictures and my fledge watch report from today’s watch.

My husband Al and I arrived at the bridge on a beautiful morning and a quick call on the radio brought us to the observation deck, where we found Carol P, Dana, Joyce and Joyce from Ottawa. Two juvies were flying around the gorge, sometimes right in front of us. Mariah was watching from the shady tree.
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Continued great flying from all the fledglings. Here are some pictures from the morning and lunchtime

It was a crisp, cool October (I mean July) morning, when I arrived on the bridge for my watch. Dan, as usual, was already at his post on the bridge keeping tabs of the whereabouts of all the birds. He updated the locations of all 4 juvies and Mariah, with Kaver off doing his thing, wherever. Jean arrived as our watches coincided–much playful flying by all 4 juvies as the sun was cresting over the downtown buildings and casting its light on the mist of the waterfalls and shining an iridescent hue thru the feathers of the juvies as thy passed in front of the “red ball”. Jean will report in more detail as I will report from 8:00-9:30 am. Also arriving for morning watch were Larry, Kathy, Jim, Joyce, Danna and Carol.
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This morning began quite quietly. Last night, a failed food transfer had resulted in a pidgeon on the floor of Jimmy Mac’s (a restaurant behind the smokestacks) fire escape. It had disappeared this morning when I arrived. Juvies, according to Dan S. had been on the stacks and on the Kodak tower when he arrived. During my time with them, they had great periods of flight in the gorge and talon tag along with rest times. They have become awesome fliers. They have practiced swooping on ducks and geese in the gorge.

Paul R was also an official watcher this morning so I will leave the spicy details to him! Let me just tantalize you by saying it was exciting and fun to watch. The juvies like to hang together either all 4, paired or 3 together with one apart from the others.

Stopped out last evening for a quick visit. The juvies were flying the gorge and a few of them took a breather on the old section Genesee Brewery, offering some nice take off and landing pictures. Here’s some that I snapped.

Lou

When we first got to Kodak building we realized that all the juvies were already out in the gorge (because all the watchers were out on the bridge). On the other side of the bridge two of the juvies were sitting on a building next to each other. Also one juvie was on the brewery and one on the middle smoke stack. While the juvies were doing a few more practice flights Mariah took off and started climbing using a combination of flapping and a lot of riding thermals way up into the sky. Mariah was hard to follow due to a cloud she kept flying in and out of but after gliding for a little while she tucked her wings and dove. About 15 minutes later she returned with a pigeon which she transferred to one of the juvies which then had to fight to keep the prey as another juvie flew in and try to take the pigeon away. Eventually they both dropped the pigeon and as of when we left no one had picked it back up again and none of them seemed to know where the prey was.