It was a lucky day for me. My day started and ended with Red-tailed Hawk sightings. I was sandwiched between them!
My day started with the sight of one of the Southeastern Central Park hawks and my day ended with Bobby and Rosie hawk inside Washington Square Park.
Thankfully, red-tails are creatures of habit and like to generally perch in the same regular area. One of the Central Park red-tails seems to like perching on the Bergdorf Goodman Mens Store on Fifth Avenue and 58th Street (across from the main store) in the mornings. I had seen what I suspect was the same hawk a couple of days before.
While walking east on 57th Street, I saw one of the hawks sitting on a terrace railing (the dark figure silhouetted against the sky on the left):
It was relaxed:
Mens store entrance:
After work I headed straight to Washington Square Park to seek out Bobby and Rosie hawk. I hadn’t been to the park in three days and I was missing the resident hawks very much and I couldn’t wait to see how they were doing. Although I’d been receiving regular reports from faithful hawk-watchers letting me know how they were faring, it’s no comparison to laying one’s eyes on them.
Rosie was in the Bobst Library nest:
She sat in the nest for a long time. At one point she did some nest fortification:
I saw the big shape of Bobby flying along the front of NYU’s Silver Building out of the corner of my eye. He landed on a perch on the facade facing the park:
He tucked in deeper into the corner and preened for a couple of minutes:
It got darker and darker. I and a hawk-watching friend were surprised Bobby was not flying off to one of his regular night roosts. Instead, it looked as though he might stay on this building perch the whole night.
Rosie had long since flown out of the nest so we checked each regular night roost for her.
We didn’t find her but it’s possible she flew back into the nest without our noticing. It was too dark to tell if she was in the nest.
When we circled back, Bobby was still in his corner building roost. It’s safe to assume he was there for the night since it was already night time. We found it strange that he would roost with his back more or less to the park (a rather vulnerable position). The hawks never cease to amaze us with their curious behavioral twists!
