A fellow Hawk-watcher who was in Washington Square Park well before me spotted Bobby atop One Fifth Avenue and Rosie on a low townhouse along the northern border of the park.
I did see Hawk(s?) during my visit as I’ll show later in this post.
Something was being filmed in the park during my visit so there was a prop telephone booth outside the main entrance:
Later on (what I think was a real NYPD officer guarding the set or at least on his beat):
Parks Security Service officers patrolling the park:
Seeing them reminded me of something I kept forgetting to mention before. These officers have been patrolling the park regularly for the last few weeks. I don’t know how expansive their powers are but hopefully some of them include writing summonses for littering and the illegal feeding of pigeons and squirrels.
Another thing I kept meaning to mention is that the park has been markedly cleaner (much less litter) since that day I came across those four dead rats on October 1st.
Garbage contributes to the rat problem so seeing much less of it brings some relief (less litter equals less food for the rats and hopefully less of a reason to use Bromadiolone in the park’s rat traps).
However, the illegal feeding and watering of the squirrels and pigeons is still a big problem.
Fresh water and nuts courtesy of a couple of regular squirrel feeders:
The tub and nuts mere inches from a few rat burrows:
Rat I saw drinking from that tub on September 26th:
A couple of creature feeders I observed during my walk:
I did a quick pass through the park and along the NYU buildings across the street from the northern border of the park to check on the status of the rat traps. The traps were in place.
What was most disheartening was seeing the NYU traps that house the Difethialone (an extremely dangerous rodenticide for the Red-tailed Hawks, as evidenced by the report linked to here) still in place.
I did not hear back from WSP Administrator Sarah Neilson in response to the email I sent her on September 27th (transcript here).
Nor have I heard back from Christopher James (or John Beckman) from NYU’s Public Affairs office. My last contact with Christopher was on September 20th.
If you would like to personally reach out to these officials (and select colleagues), their contact info is below.
- Sarah Neilson, Washington Square Park Administrator and Executive Director, Washington Square Park Conservancy. Sarah.Neilson@parks.nyc.gov. 212.408.0297.
- Veronica M. White, Commissioner, NYC Parks. Veronica.White@parks.nyc.gov. 212.360.1305.
- John Sexton, President, NYU. John.Sexton@nyu.edu. 212.998.2345.
- John Beckman, Vice President, Public Affairs, NYU. John.Beckman@nyu.edu. 212.998.6848.
- Christopher James, Public Affairs, NYU. Christopher.James@nyu.edu. 212.998.6876.
***
A bit of a sad sight was the loss of a couple of the trees that used to be in planters outside Bobst Library:
“I am stumped”
Yeah, me too.
I was a block east of the park when I spotted a Red-tailed Hawk soaring way up high in the sky. It was too high up to tell if it was Bobby or Rosie (or a migrating Hawk) but if I had to guess I’d say it was Bobby:
A second raptor appeared:
The first Hawk tucked in and picked up speed to get away from the second one. It then flew further east:
A fellow Hawk-watcher just let me know that either Bobby or Rosie was roosting at the Red Roost Inn tonight (it was too dark out to tell which one it was).