The first Red-tailed Hawk I saw late Friday was Bobby at the eastern side of Washington Square Park:
He caught a rat in the brush:
Rosie appeared and chased Bobby from tree to tree, from the west side to the east side, over the square, then over the east side of the park, trying to steal his food from him over the course of the next twelve minutes:
They made a racket with their loud cries over the park:
But Rosie never did manage to take the rat from Bobby.
Bobby:
Rosie:
Bobby disappeared with the rat behind buildings lining the eastern side of the park. He was gone for a while so I figured he found a place away from Rosie to eat it. Naturally I hope the rat was not poisoned by the park’s multiple poison traps and that Bobby will not get sick or die from his meal.
Rosie gave up chasing Bobby and reappeared on the roof of NYU’s Silver Center:
She spent a long while scanning for prey beneath her.
Bobst Library (location of the nest) behind her:
She gave up on the east side, moving to the west side of the park to hunt:
In a new tree, on a low branch at the northwestern corner of the park:
It was while she was on the low branch above when she was harassed by the two people feeding squirrels, as described in my last post:
Rosie eventually left that corner of the park and flew to a tree a bit further south and hunted for prey in that new location.
She spotted a rat and jumped on it, killing it quickly. She caught the rat only a couple of feet from where Bobby caught his rat earlier.
She flew her catch to a building top.
I then searched throughout the park for the Parks Enforcement Patrol officers I saw several minutes earlier to report the incident with the people harassing Rosie but never saw them again.
I saw Rosie fly from her building to the Hawks’ evening roost so I checked in on the two.
They were all settled in for the evening:
