****Update: I emailed City Room / Updates From the Nest to see if there was anything we, the public, could do to help the situation with the plastic around Violet’s leg and was told that we just need to be patient and that they understand the urgency and are working on it. Within a few minutes I received an update from the same person; he let me know a bird rehabber will be going with an NYU worker to the site this afternoon to assess the situation.
I woke early today and took these screen shots of Violet feeding her first chick. The other two eggs have still not hatched. You should have seen how gentle and attentive mom was during this feeding. A couple of chunks of meat were too big for the chick to grab hold of so they were dropped. Mom picked up each chunk, bit it down to make it into a smaller portion, then carefully fed the chick, making sure it ate. So beautiful!
Feeding was between 6:30AM – 6:38AM
Unfortunately, there’s a serious problem in the nest. Some of the greenish blue plastic strands in the nest has gotten wrapped around Violet’s right leg. As you can see in the bottom photo, her right foot is severely swollen. People are aware of this problem and there’s hope that bird experts will be allowed to try to net Violet so they could remove the plastic. If she isn’t freed, she could lose her leg and she and her chick(s) would die. 🙁
I’m in serious angst over this. In fact, this is why I’ve been up since about 4:30 this morning. I could not stay asleep. I saw Violet struggling to free herself from a strand of the plastic last night and it upset me very, very much. It turns out she freed her foot from the strand overnight but a lot of it has wrapped all the way around her leg several times. I couldn’t help but imagine the chicks getting trapped in the plastic and unable to fly, or Violet or Bobby getting caught in it or worse.
The plastic looks like the fake grass put in the bottom of Easter baskets. The hawks, liking its soft texture, probably brought the plastic to the nest thinking it would be a nice, soft cushion for the chicks. :*-(
Read the updates about this and the nest in general here: