Exciting watch!! Sacajawea completes her second flight and Grace fledges–not once but twice. Sacajawea spent her night on the ledge of the 15th floor of the tower. At 5:45 am she makes her 2nd flight–flying east toward the High Falls smoke stack and circles back landing on the southeast corner of the top of building 10 (adjacent to the Kodak tower). She could be seen walking and hopping along the eastern edge while flapping her wings. Ananta is roaming in the playpen area flapping her wings and disappearing behind the west wall every once in a while only to reappear. At 6:00 am Grace hops onto the main camera and for the next 15 minutes she hopped back and forth to the perch of the nestbox and back onto the main camera.

At 6:20 Linn joins Grace on the main camera. Not much room for flapping wings! Mariah is positioned on the northeast ledge of the 15th floor of the tower keeping and eye on Sacajawea. Kaver is nowhere to be seen. Around the same time Mariah takes off on a stoop diving hard and fast for the gorge. Suddenly, Kaver appears out of the High Falls stack following Mariah on the stoop, also in a fast dive with wings tucked. Mariah returns with a successful catch and lands next to Sacajawea leaving the meal for her.
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Sacajawea Makes her First Flight

I arrived at 5:00 to see Mariah sitting on the SE launchpad [a flat area above the nest box -ed.], Linn was on the nestbox perch and I saw flapping on the south spotlight in the playpen. The weather was sunny, quite windy and in the 70’s . Mariah, then, flew at full velocity to the south from the tower. She came back with another falcon who she treated very aggressively, circling around and trying to engage. When they both landed on the east side of the tower I realized that it WAS Kaver and that they were fighting over food. Kaver tried to take it to the scrape but Mariah ended up with it and it was fed to the Eyases in the playpen. At 5:40 Mariah and Kaver flew shallow loops in front of the south side of the tower, to entice the Eyases into the air. Read the rest of this entry »

The eyases are getting more mobile as you can see from this picture of Grace and Linn. If you’ve been reading the reports from our fledge watchers you know that they’re spending a lot of time moving around the “playpen”, the catwalk area below the nest box.

Late this evening we received word that the first of the four eyases has fledged! We’ll leave all the details to our fledge watcher’s official report, which will be coming soon, so stay tuned!

By the way, be sure to read down the list a bit. Some of the watchers’ reports are posted several hours after their shifts, and we’re publishing them in chronological order, so the most recently submitted posts might not always appear at the top of the list. They’re all well worth reading!

-Jess

There really isn’t as much to report as I had hoped for – I arrived at 12:30, talked with the other watchers that were there (Carol P, Jeanne, Jim P, Lisa McK, Barb, Dan, Shaky, Carrie, and others that my poor brain can’t recall right now), most of whom left around 1:00. Barb and Dan stayed with me (thank you!), despite the less than desirable weather. It was quite windy and mostly cloudy (and cool), and I was sort of glad to see that there wasn’t much action on the tower; if one of the girls had fledged she would have had a very tough time getting back. It’s funny, since we couldn’t see Linn most of us thought that she had made it down to the playpen to join the other 3 – little did we know that she was resting under the nestbox! What a goof!

After a long while, Dan left, but Barb kept me company for the rest of the afternoon. Around 3 the weather started to brighten, the wind shifted direction a bit, and we realized that moving into the sun was now a better option than it had been. The girls seemed to sense the change as well, flapping a bit but mostly moving from floodlight to floodlight. We did periodically see all 4 girls – at least in part – many times at that point. Kaver left at about 2:45, and was gone for so long that at about 4:15 Mariah took off to the south, but after 15 minutes she returned without food as well. We hadn’t really seen a food exchange or obvious feeding all afternoon. Not to worry, though, those girls are doing just fine! Read the rest of this entry »

Not much activity to report for the hour. Mariah and Kaver did some flying, trying to coax the eyases off the building, but there were no takers. Thick cumulus clouds obscured the sun much of the time and stiff winds kept the weather unexpectedly cool. These are not the best conditions for fledging flights– the eyases will have little enough control when they fly, and strong gusts could prove dangerous.

There was some wing flapping from the trio in the playpen, but not the level of activity that we’d associate with birds on the verge of fledging.

Sabrina fledged on June 19, 2006, so we’re a day past last year’s first fledge. Sabrina was especially adventurous though, and probably a male to boot, so it’s not too surprising that none of this year’s brood have gone yet. Last year, Aura and Rhea Mae fledged on June 23, so I’m guessing we’ll see a flight from one or another of this year’s juvenile falcons in a few days.

We’ve posted information for those of you who might be interested in joining the Fledge Watch. Read it here.

This morning Sacajawea took the plunge, hopping from the nest box to one of the cameras before joining Ananta and Grace in the “playpen” beneath the nest box. Little Linn got a visit from Mariah who brought breakfast, but hopefully she’ll join her sisters before long as well. First flights should come any day now, so keep watching!

UPDATE: 11:30AM It looks like Linn has left the nest box! She’s sitting on the ledge to the left of the box. Things are likely to start moving very quickly now, so stay tuned for more reports from our on-scene watchers!

-Jess

I came down this morning expecting to find other fledge watchers, but saw no one until I had to leave at 11:40 (to volunteer at the soup kitchen), so here is my very unofficial report. It was fairly cool and windy, marvelous soaring conditions for experienced flyers. Mariah and Kaver made many short flights, a few loops then back to the tower – they might have been saying, “Look girls, this is how to begin – a short distance, then back home, but please – No Stacks!” I could see one eyas, presumably Linn, on the perch, and in the playpen some wings, often two sets at a time but never all three simultaneously. The calm behavior of the parents indicated all was well. From shortly after 10 until 10:30, everything was very quiet. One parent was on a ledge above the rockets, the other on the last “K” of the Kodak sign. Linn was on the perch and another eyas on the center light in the playpen. Then the short periodic “demo” flights began again. At about 11:00, Kaver chased something very large, a turkey vulture I think. At around 11:30, Linn moved to the ledge at the left side of the nestbox. There were several short hops and bouts of wing flapping visible in the playpen, but no flights.

Sacajawea Gets Watchers’ Hearts Pounding

Dan, Jeanne, Lisa and myself were at the Bru watching Sacajawea exercise on the scrape roof. Earlier at least two times, Mariah and Kaver had been flying back and forth in front of the scrape and giving the eyases training lessons in what falcons can do.

Anyway, thru a combination of sources, we knew that two eyases were in the playpen (Ananta and Grace), Sacajawea was on the roof of the scrape and Linn had perched and then hopped to the side of the scrape.
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There was an hour of good watching at lunchtime today before some seriously dangerous weather rolled through downtown Rochester. No flights from the fledglings, but Mariah and Kaver put on a bit of a show, while Sacajawea and Linn did some wing flapping. Read all the details and view pictures here.

This is my first time ever doing this, so please bear with me and accept my apologies for any missteps. Upon arrival to the fledge watch, it was soon discovered that two of the young girls were in the nest box whilst two others were flitting about the playpen. There was much wing exercising to be witnessed – Ananta being the biggest showoff. Mariah kept a close watch from either the railing or the lightning post above the nest box. She would occasionally fly about, but no food exchange was noted – much to the dismay of the wailing ladies each time Mariah approached them in flight. Binoculars did not allow for the identification of each juvenile, unfortunately. The warm and bright sunlight was abruptly dismissed by a torrential downpour and darkening of the skies. This did not phase our falcon family in the least, but did make for difficult observation. We certainly had our share of excitement when three fire trucks came roaring up and parked themselves just outside the Kodak building. Apparently one of the web cams was sporting a bit of fog that was mistaken for smoke, and speculation was made as to the nest box being on fire! The Kodak security guard verified with the fledge watchers that all was indeed well, and denied access to the fire crew that was eagerly pushing to approach the nest box – imagine the irreparable damage that would ensue from a visit complete with axes, hoses and hardhats!! No juveniles fledged during this watch, but two of them were indeed mobile along the nest box and catwalk.

Julie Lowe