It was a tough night of hawk-watching tonight. I say that only because although it was wonderful to see a hawk for the third night in a row, it was heartbreaking to not get as close as I’ve gotten used to getting in order to take detailed photos and feel connected to the hawk(s); however silly that may sound.
After circling Washington Square Park with a fellow hawk-watcher for close to an hour, he spotted what turned out to be Bobby on a building top at the complete far end of the park from where we were walking.
It was Bobby:
A murder of crows sat on the next building, watching him:
One of them dive-bombed Bobby as he sat on the clay tile roof. After a few seconds, he flew off the rooftop and was chased by the crows while soaring over the Western edge of the park. Bobby then flew to a perch atop a nearby building where he was finally left alone:
He flew from that perch to a more suitable lookout point:
Without warning or provocation, he took off and soared nearly over my head to a building in the distance:
It took a few minutes but my fellow Pipster spotted Bobby yet again. This time, Bobby was a good few blocks away and seated atop some NYU housing:
I called a nearby resident hawk-watcher with Bobby’s location so she could join us and enjoy seeing him as well. She arrived in time to see Bobby at this latest perch.
He sat on this new perch for about half an hour before flying past and overhead again:
Although we spread out over a few nearby blocks in search of him,we never saw Bobby again this evening. Since it was getting very dark, I took a couple of shots of the night scenes along the path I took when walking toward the park to join my friends again.
Here’s a shot of Bobby’s earlier perches (three of the buildings overlooking the park) but in a different light:
This building is where Bobby was first spotted today (see the first photo in this post):
And here is the building with the urn-like shapes he also sat on:
We hawksters bid each other goodnight after chatting for several minutes. Here is a photo of the moon I took before leaving the neighborhood:
It’s pretty great that my camera found a way to automatically block out the surrounding sky and represent it as solid black when honing in on the moon! Trust me, this level of focus was not my doing (although I admit it took me a few minutes to color correct/sharpen this image to just how I wanted it to look before posting it). 🙂
Tomorrow is another day and I hope to see at least one hawk!