Raptor Romance a Welcome Sight

OK ...so it's not really romance-- Falcons of course, are much too busy to bother with affairs of the heart. Author's license aside though, every spring for the past few years one of my "must have" photo sequences has been to capture Mariah and Kaver in the act of mating. Not out of any prurient interest, but rather because because it's an affirmation of the promise of spring, a welcome harbinger of the season to come. Call me crazy, but I also find the dynamics of the act fascinating.

So yesterday I found myself outside at lunch time for what promised to be the best weather of the week. The forecast in Rochester is for snow, rain and clouds for the next few days, but today featured crisp a crisp azure sky and an abundance of bright sunlight.

Kaver sat near the nest box, resplendent in the sun. Mariah was nowhere to be found. During the first half of the hour that's how things stayed, and I began to think the only activity I was going to witness for the hour was the incremental progress on the construction of the new townhouses across from the Kodak tower.

My waiting was to be rewarded though as Mariah flew in from a her hidden perch somewhere on the east or north side of the cupola at the top of the tower:
     

When she landed tail up on the southwest corner of the playpen, I figured things were about to get more interesting:
     

Kaver didn't make me wait long. He swung out over the construction workers, oblivious to the activity above them, and headed for his rendezvous:


It was a pattern well known to those who've watched these two for a while, so I had no problem getting my camera ready for the landing and subsequent copulation:
          

My Canon chattered away at 6.5 frames per second and the bright conditions helped me grab a great many shots, a mere smattering of which I've included here. One thing I noticed is that for all the care that Kaver appears to take, there's a good deal of jostling going on up there:
          
Look closely and you'll see that Mariah has to work hard to hang on to the edge of the playpen. In a couple of frames I didn't include, she actually lost her footing!

In only a few seconds their brief congress ended:
          

Kaver headed for the High Falls smokestack where he made an effortless landing:
          

Mariah remained where she was for a while, then shook out her feathers and took off:


They both circled over the old Visitor parking lot, then Kaver headed for the communication tower:


I didn't follow Mariah's flight, but I imagine she went downtown because some time later she reappeared, flying in from the south. She landed on the perch rail of the nest box:


Kaver remained on one of the antennas, a sleek silhouette against the blue sky, and that's where I left them as the hour drew to a close.

Back in the office, I checked the images from the Rochester Falconcam's cameras. I'd hoped that the view from Camera 1 would capture Mariah on the corner of the playpen, and indeed there she was in the lower left corner:


Was fortune smiling on us? Did the camera perhaps capture the mating moment? Alas, no. All the action occurred in the minute between the image above and this one:


No big deal-- that's what fast firing D-SLR cameras and long lenses are for. In a bit of a post-script, as I was walking out to my car in the afternoon I witnessed another mating. Watchers are reporting multiple copulations each day. Egg laying should begin in about a week, so everything is on track for another great falcon-rearing season. Of course, the past couple of years have brought mystery and some real drama during egg laying. I wouldn't even hazard a guess as to what we'll see this year, but I'm looking forward to following all the action.