A man stopped me on the pedestrian bridge this morning to warn me that there were some men drinking on the benches at the far end of the bridge, near the brewery. He advised that I may want to be cautious about going near them. I thanked him for warning me and got my binoculars out. I saw Carol at the opposite end of the bridge and approached her. I asked her if there were any men drinking around there and she said she had not seen any and she had been there for an hour. She mentioned that she was drinking water. It was 6:50 AM and she needed to get into work. Luckily for me Jeanne showed up in a few minutes.
Jeanne and I were the only watchers there until we left a little before 9:00 AM. Things started out pretty slowly, so I began video taping other creatures. These pictures are copied from the video, so the image quality is not to great. I'm including them to go along with the narrative.
We saw ducks, crows and spiders, there wasn't much going on in the gorge.
Then, at about 8:45 a falcon decided to stoop on a gull.
Another falcon flew in high, but it was time for us to get to work, so we departed. We would be back!
I returned to the gorge around 6:00 PM, Kelly arrived at the same time. Chad was already there and he was watching a falcon high in the air above the pedestrian bridge before it flew off towards downtown. We all began scanning the skies trying to spot the falcons.
A cormorant was flying around the gorge.
Aura slid into the gorge on a rainbow! She made her way onto a support beam under the pedestrian bridge at about 6:20 PM.
There was a lot more activity in the gorge in the evening. We saw a ground hog, geese, a beaver, a turkey and a poult (aka turkette). At 6:25 PM Carol made her way to the gorge. I was at the end of the bridge near Jimmy Mac's trying to find Aura on the bridge. Kelly and Chad were hanging over the side of the bridge taking pictures of her, Carol joined them. I'm not comfortable doing that, in order to get a good shot I would probably need to get half my body over the edge because I'm not a tall person. That just sounds like a recipe for disaster.
I decided to tilt the view finder on my camera and stick my arm way out to get this shot of Aura.
Carol wanted to get a picture of Aura at the moment she flew off the bridge. Aura stayed under the bridge from 6:20 - 8:08 PM. Much of that time Carol spent leaning over the bridge waiting for Aura to fly. After all that exhausting work Aura flew off unphotographed. Meanwhile a falcon flying high went over the gorge at 6:45 PM. A little while later, about 7:10 PM, all the gulls on the beach of the island started flying around. One of the juveniles was flying around with them, we didn't see any tags, but bets were on that it was Sabrina. Speaking of Sabrina, if she ever undergoes a sex change operation, my son thinks a good name for him would be Sabre, what do you think? She is a little wild.
Kelly, then Chad left about 7:30. Kelly was sure that the instant she left Aura would fly off, but Aura stayed put even though two watchers left.
While Carol and I were waiting for Aura to fly off we heard a ruckus behind us. Sabrina and Regal Rhea Mae were flying around kakking about something.
Rhea Mae landed on the BeeBee station, Carol went around to the front of the BeeBee station to find Sabrina, but Sabrina didn't seem to be around.
Meanwhile Rhea Mae left the BeeBee station and I lost her behind part of the building. I looked all over the back of the BeeBee station but couldn't find her.
About 7:55 Jeanne showed up. I think she and Carol are falcaholics. Jeanne spotted a falcon flying from the Kodak tower to the communication tower at 8:00. Aura left her perch at 8:08.
At 8:20 we spotted a couple of falcons flying between the stacks. A group of six or seven people asked Carol, Jeanne and I what we were doing. They seemed very interested in the falcons. Carol answered all their enthusiastic questions. She told the two men in the foreground about the Kodak falcon discussion board. I couldn't remember the link to the board, but I did remember the URL for my blog, so I gave that to them and told them they could find the discussion board link on my blog. I'll include it right here for easy reference: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kfalconcam/
When our new friends showed up I kind of lost track of what the falcons were doing. Carol thinks it was Kaver who flew off the tower, over the gorge, past the apartment building next to the brewery and then did a stoop. I think the juvies did some more flying too. We all left the gorge around 8:45. All in all, a very fine day for falcon watching.
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