I was alone for the first leg of my search for the Washington Square Park red-tailed hawks. I spotted Bobby finishing a rat or mouse meal on a branch near where I was walking:
Finished with his meal, he contentedly began to “feak”, or wipe the meal’s remnants off his beak on the branch:
He sat on a perch overlooking an area where many rats are known to live:
I walked over to a better spot to photograph him and got to enjoy watching him preen and relax for a while:
Hello:
Violet flew overhead and out of sight. Bobby watched her fly by:
Watching rats and squirrels below:
One of a few squirrels who approached him to harass:
He was watching so many rats and mice on the ground below with such earnest, I thought he might make a go for them but he didn’t. Instead, he flew to another tree:
More and more hawk friends arrived at the park and got to delight in Bobby’s personage.
He saw prey to his liking:
You can make out the gray of his feathers in the brush:
Success:
After his second meal, he flew to a new tree:
Another perch:
I lost sight of Bobby but almost immediately, a fellow hawk-watcher called to let me know she saw a hawk at the Red Roost Inn (the hawks’ regular night perch). It could only be Violet at the roost. Within a couple of minutes, she called back to say a second hawk just flew to the roost. I stopped looking for Bobby in the park and made my way to the roost since he was obviously with Violet. It was a lovely sight to see the two of them together again.
Violet on the perch above Bobby, steadying her footing:
It became too dark for me to photograph so I left the two love birds for the night.