I just got to Grand Army Plaza (outside the southeastern corner of Central Park) when I heard the mad rush of pigeons in flight all around me.
I looked up in time to see the male Plaza Red-tailed Hawk chasing them, flying past me, circling around, then landing at the Plaza Hotel nest site:
He hopped into the nest site (which is actually one window ledge west from the original site). The ledge is getting fortified with new nesting material. Octavia sitting on the left:
The site was definitely not this full of nesting material on Friday (the last time I checked on the location).
Octavia then hopped into the site:
The male:
He returned:
Octavia and the Plaza male are working together to build this nest. Meanwhile, Octavia had helped Pale Male fortify his nest over the weekend (according to Pale Male dot com).
Plaza male on the right:
It appears that this male’s chances of winning Octavia over are still good if he can continue bonding with her and keep up with his nest-building activity.
I looked at my blog’s archives and noted that the first time I saw her with this male was in November of 2012 (three months after she started hanging out with Pale Male further north). That does not mean she started seeing the Plaza male regularly in November. I only mean that late November was when I first saw her in the Plaza male’s territory.
So in all respects, she has been familiar with the Plaza male for at least three months. There was a stretch of a few months last summer and autumn (August to late November) when I did not regularly visit southeastern Central Park because of my heavy work load and because of time away on vacation in Australia. So she could have started visiting the Plaza male as early as August or September.
The male flew off again:
Octavia:
Octavia left the nest and circled and soared above Grand Army Plaza:
Note the tell-tale black dot on the underside of her tail feather. Excellent shots of her tail feather dots can be seen here as she cavorts with Pale Male further north.
The Plaza male had perched on his favorite perch on The Pierre Hotel:
Octavia joined him:
She then poised herself into mating position:
He swooped around and landed near her:
As he was swooping in to land, I thought he may land on her to mate but he instead sat below her for a minute before flying to his favorite perch on the Sherry-Netherland Hotel:
Octavia then flew north (maybe to return to Pale Male’s territory).
The Plaza male then resumed sitting on his favorite spot atop the Pierre:
All this activity occurred over the course of a half hour.
I went to Washington Square Park after work but did not see either Bobby or Rosie Hawk. A Hawk-watching friend who visited the park after me (well after roosting time) found both Hawks roosting together at NYU’s Silver Center building.
The pair must have flown to Silver to roost no more than five or ten minutes after I had checked that building for them since it was quite dark when I left the park.