Exciting Evening For The Girls

After a few days of relatively uneventful fledging activity, it seemed we were due for a little drama. Late yesterday Diamante took his fledging flight, and this morning Quest joined her siblings in flight.

Both looked like they did pretty well. Quest ended up on a low building across State Street from the Kodak tower, and Diamante showed some of Zephyr's circumspection by making small manageable flights around the tower.

For most of the day Susan B was nowhere to be found, even as Zephyr showed off his rapidly improving flight skills. Watchers surmised that little Suzie might have fallen down the High Falls smokestack, where she had been located late last night in Zephyr's company. However, repeated sweeps of the area turned up no sign of her.

I arrived around 4:30PM after a shift with the Perinton Volunteer Ambulance, and found Mariah up on the High Falls stack. It looked like she was keeping an eye on something but I couldn't see the object of her attention.


As I walked around the new townhouse construction it was a couple of first-time watchers (sorry, I've forgotten your names!) who pointed out Quest on her low building. She alternated between hopping around and letting the breeze fill her outstretched wings:
     

          

After an hour of puttering around on the rooftop she finally decided to fly. As fortune would have it, she went right over my head only a few meters over my head:
     

She picked up altitude as she overflew the construction site and made a respectable landing on some of the pipes at the BeeBee Station:


Carol P, Jeanne and I watched approvingly, as did the many falcon fans assembled at Falcon Watching HQ across the street.

When the antsy Quest hopped out of site, I walked toward the bridge for a better look. So I was surprised when, as I passed a small parking lot at the power station, I saw this:


My first thought was that somehow Quest had ended up on the ground, but a quick look through my binoculars verified Susan B's green band. Carol had gone to get her car, and Jeanne was some way behind me. I turned back to her and shouted that I'd found little Suzie! Jeanne hurried up to where I was, and I continued around the small High Falls Office Building on Mill Street to get a reverse angle on the grounded Peregrine. We observed her for a while. She appeared to be uninjured, and was walking just fine:


As a precaution Jeanne retrieved her pet carrier. A number of the watchers began to gather. We kept a discrete distance and considered our options while Susan B continued to explore the parking lot:


Eventually she found a gap in the chain link fence that bordered the lot. It led her to an area of greenery behind the Jimmy Macs restaurant. Normally we like to let the falcons "rescue themselves" so to speak, and find their own way back up to the tower, but Susan B had chosen a poor course. On its own going behind the fence might not have been a big problem, but it was surrounded by deep undergrowth and had a precipitous drop into the gorge.

Rather than surrender her to the uncertainty of that environment, we decided to attempt to capture her. Some deft climbing by Brian H got him behind the fence. Equipped with Jeanne's pink jacket, Brian herded Susan B back toward the fence. She didn't get the hint that she should go back the way she came, though, so I suggested that he cover her with the jacket, which he did.

Watcher Kat Barone waited on the other side of the fence with the pet carrier, but the gap was too small for Brian to pass Susan B through, so he climbed one side of the fence and I climbed the other. I wedged a foot into the fence for a better purchase, and Carol provided much needed support as Brian handed Susan B over the barbed wire at the top of the fence. I took her and lowered the falcon gingerly into the pet carrier that Kat was holding. Truly a team rescue!

After a quick look at Susan B and a cooling spritz of water from Carol's mister, we considered our next step. The little falcon appeared none the worse for wear. Her eyes were bright and she was alert, though probably a little tired. We quickly decided that a relase from the rooftop of one of the Kodak buildings was our best option, so Carol, Kat and I headed for the tower. We hailed Kodak security, and were met by Guard Al Clausen, who escorted me up to the top of building 9. Attentive readers will recognize this as the building from which I often photograph the falcons while they're on the tower. It has a broad flat roof with easy line of sight to the tower and the nestbox, so I knew that Mariah and Kaver wouldn't have any trouble seeing her there.

Up on the roof, I opened the pet carrier and tipped it up. Susan B walked out and I backed away, lingering only for a couple of pictures:

She gave me a stern look in recompense for her wrinkled dignity and shook herself out as Al and I made our exit. All in all, it was a fine rescue.

Back down at Falcon Watching HQ we found Zephyr practicing his landings on the antennas and other structures atop the Bru building. The boy is growing into an excellent flyer who makes his landings with a pro's aplomb:


Someone pointed out that Susan B had made an appearance at the southern edge of Building 9, so we turned our attention back to her:


It wasn't long before she made a neat flight westward over Morrie Silver Way. It was a little lower than I'd have liked, but she made a pretty good landing on the soutwest corner of Kodak's building 16:


Watchers Tom and Sheryl joined me by Frontier Field as we observed her for a good half hour while she moved along the west edge of the building and took a short nap.

Rested and apparently restless, she jumped up onto the arm of a surveillance camera and let loose a cry that cut through the evening air:


Then almost before we knew it she was in the air, headed back up Morrie Silver Way toward State Street. We watched as she made a very neat landing on the corner of the Bru building:

Both she and Quest look to be in pretty good shape. They're probably both a little hungry-- there wasn't a lot of feeding going on-- but both are flying well enough considering their scant experience.

I took another look around and consulted with the other watchers until we accounted for all of the fledglings. Since it was getting late I decided to head home, leaving the falcons to the care of the many other dedicated volunteers on hand. I'll be out again tomorrow. Hopefully we've seen our one and only rescue for the year, but it's great to know that we've a talented team of folks ready to act when the need arises.