I was not able to visit the park on the 11th but a couple of faithful Pip watchers were. JumpFlapper2 was kind enough to submit this report from the field:
“Initially we didn’t see any hawks but soon thereafter found Bobby and Pip in the hawk playground area, ie, the southwest fenced-in corner of the park. Pip was looking for Bobby to feed her and she spent a good amount of time crying. She made a couple of what appeared to be half-hearted attempts at pouncing on a squirrel and atone point seemed to be wrestling fiercely- with wings broadly extended & alot of bouncing around – with something under a low branched pine tree but in the end that prey looked to me like a large crushed pine cone and she came out of that wrestling bout with pine needles in her beak. Pip & Bobby both were doing alot of flying around in the “playground” and Bobby flew across the path a number of times to trees in the northwest corner and then returned. Pip did a little flying back and forth south area to north area and back again, not as much as Bobby. Violet may have been there also but was hard to be sure because we never saw all 3 birds at once this evening and there were times we lost sight of Bobby, and as it got darker not always able to tell if the parent hawk was Bobby or Violet when it reappeared. At one point late in the evening it did seem 2 adult hawks flew in succession across to the northwest section, unless it was one hawk flying in a circle and at that time it was getting dark. It didn’t appear that Bobby brought any food to Pip while we were observing them. When we left close to 9pm Bobby was in a tree in the southwest section, and Pip was newly perched in a tree in the northwest section. A fellow who was talking with me for quite a while this evening told me that Pip was hanging out in the children’s playground earlier in the day. This guy spends a lot of time in the park b/c he is a dog walker and has seen the hawks often. It was a joy to see the hawks again, after a nearly sightless Sunday.”
Thanks for your update, JumpFlapper2!!