I visited Pale Male and Octavia today, hoping to see how the couple was faring now that they reportedly have at least one egg in their nest.
Their nest:
Pale Male showed up(flying north along Fifth Avenue),roughly ten minutes after my friend and I arrived :
He landed in the nest:
Octavia happened to have not been in the nest with her egg(s?).
Pale Male cried out loudly, presumably for her.
He flew out of the nest after a nine minute visit.
He flew out of sight then returned to the nest two minutes later:
He left the nest again, after about twenty minutes:
Octavia finally appeared (about fifty minutes after my friend and I arrived at the nest), five minutes after Pale Male’s last visit to the nest.
Octavia:
Octavia’s tell-tale featherdots:
Nest from the side:
Octavia seemed settled in so my friend and I left her nest to go further down the park to visit the Plaza Male (and who he may be palling around with now).
Apparently there were some sightings of the Plaza Male mating with a new female between the time I last saw him and Octavia together and after Octavia began to incubate her first egg in Pale Male’s nest.
If the sightings were accurate (despite the lack of photos unfortunately), they are encouraging in that they mean the Plaza Male might have found a new mate already.
Such a quick ‘mate turnover’ is something we’ve seen before. Violet was rescued and taken from Washington Square Park for medical treatment the evening of December 24th, 2011 and Rosie appeared the very next morning, pairing off with Bobby immediately and ever since.
I hope to see and photograph the Plaza Male (if that was indeed the Hawk who was seen mating) and this new female together soon!
The Plaza Male flew to his favorite Sherry-Netherland Hotel perch:
Two other Red-tailed Hawks appeared high in the sky across from him:
The Plaza Male flew off his perch and flew near the other two Hawks for a couple of minutes.
Plaza Male:
He did not interact with the other birds directly but his presence may have scared them off because one flew north and the other flew far southwest and out of the park.
Plaza Male returned to the Sherry-Netherland:
One of the new Hawks returned and soared over Grand Army Plaza again. This Hawk the Plaza Male took interest in. He flew near this new Hawk, trailing it for a few before it flew away again.
I did not get great shots of this new Hawk but it was an adult Red-tail with heavy markings on the undersides of its wings and belly band (and an absence of tail feather dots so it was a new bird for sure).
The Plaza Male left the Sherry-Netherland again:
He then perched on his favorite Pierre Hotel perch:
He flew north, dropped down to a low building top out of great eyeshot and my friend and I were freezing from the cold so we left.
We visited Washington Square Park to check on Rosie and Bobby but as usual, Rosie was too far tucked down in her nest to see and Bobby was out and about away from the park.