Month: July 2011

Because the Washington Square Park hawk family is now so famous, many people who have seen red-tailed hawks in the East Village/Lower East Side recently have wondered if they were seeing Violet, Bobby, or Pip. This may not necessarily be the case.

There is at least one more red-tailed hawk family in the neighborhood. More specifically, there are at least two red-tailed hawks who frequent Tompkins Square Park and the several blocks West, East and South of that park. It was these hawks I first noticed and started following/documenting a little less than a year ago.

I would visit Tompkins Square Park on occasion and would be lucky enough to see them eating a rat in a tree, communicating with each other, or fly from tree to tree before leaving the park and flying either further East or South. One of my favorite neighborhood blogs, EVGrieve, has several posts dedicated to the Tompkins Square Park/Lower East Side/East Village red-tails.

Here are a few posts from that blog with great photos: http://evgrieve.com/2011/07/red-tailed-hawk-welcomes-visitors-to.html, http://evgrieve.com/2011/07/dining-with-red-tailed-hawk-in-tompkins.html, http://evgrieve.com/2011/07/red-tailed-hawk-back-in-tompkins-square.html

Here are a few photos from the above posts which show Tommy, Tompkins Square Park’s red-tailed hawk:

Continue to the full post… “Some recent hawk sightings in the area may not include Violet, Bobby, or Pip”

There have been numerous and confirmed sightings of our hawk family North of Washington Square Park in recent days. At first I could not be sure if the birds were the same ones I had been following these last few months but I have seen photographic proof that Pip has indeed been seen a few blocks north of the park.

After taking a break from hawk-watching because of the insufferable heat wave over the last few days, a fellow hawk-watching friend and I trekked around Washington Square Park today to try to find the hawks but to no avail. Knowing the hawks may be seen north of the park, we walked up 5th Avenue in an attempt to track them down. I was fortunate to have spottedthese two hawks circling above University Place and about 12th Street (2 blocks South of Union Square Park and about five blocks Northeast of Washington Square Park). I don’t know if the two hawks in the video footage below were Bobby or Violet or Pip but I would assume they were two of our Washington Square Park trio.

Continue to the full post… “Hawk sightings at last (two videos in this post) – July 24, 2011”

Footage of Bobby as he hops from perch to perch on a building at the Eastern end of Washington Square Park.