A friend had seen Dell the returned fledgling in his tree after I had left Washington Square Park last night but did not see him in his tree when walking through this morning so I knew I had a search challenge ahead of me today.
As mentioned in my last post, the name Dell was bequeathed to the fledgling by Cathy Horvath of WINORR since it had been found perched on a computer monitor in one of NYU’s classrooms a few days ago.
I came upon this mess of a rat trap soon after arriving in the park:
Both halves were lying there as if tampered with and discarded. The park hires contractors to empty and reset the snaps (until the poison is reintroduced into the park but more on that for another post). I didn’t see a contractor around so it’s anyone’s guess what this was all about. Note the empty peanut shells lying around nearby. Where there is squirrel food, there are rats to eat it.
The first Red-tailed Hawk I saw was Bobby on NYU’s Silver Center:
I followed him as he flew from perch to perch.
On Judson Memorial Church cross (a Blue Jay perched below him). The Blue Jay dive-bombed him a few times:
The Blue Jay followed him to his next perch:
I lost Bobby when he flew northward.
I spotted Rosie on the upper left-hand corner of Silver:
Looking north:
I found Bobby again, on one of his One Fifth Avenue perches:
Rosie:
All of a sudden she descended like a shot and into a park bush across from her.
She rose up quickly and flew to a tree. She had caught a Sparrow:
She then flew right over my head and out the park, headed north:
She then brought the food a half block north of the park, to University Place between Washington Square North and 8th Street:
I began to hear a fledgling crying so I was optimistic I would find either Dell or his sibling.
Rosie was eating, a dark feathered shape near her:
At first I thought it may be Dell but it turned out to be the body of a pigeon (a future meal).
However I did spot the source of the crying directly below Rosie. It was Dell!
Rosie leaned over the edge of her ‘lunch table’:
Rosie flew back to the park:
There was now no doubt that Rosie knew where her fledgling was.
A construction worker who was watching the scene unfold came over to talk with me about the birds. He told me he saw the bigger bird (Rosie) land next to the fledgling earlier.
He said she had a small bird with her and had left it with the baby. Because I wanted to be absolutely sure of the details of his account and to confirm she had indeed visited and fed the fledgling, I asked him for some other details. It all checked out.
For a few seconds it even looked like Dell was eating (which further substantiated what the man saw).
He got up and explored his ledge:
He eyed a railing loaded with pigeon spikes. ‘Oh brother, don’t even!’, I thought.
It was hard to believe but he was able to navigate around the spikes and get some good footing.
I looked around for Rosie or Bobby but didn’t see them. But I did see the other fledgling further down the street, atop NYU’s Shimkin building:
Looking back toward Dell:
Preening:
I could have stuck around to see what happened next but I had already been at the park for four hours (and was happy to see that Rosie and the fledgling had found each other) so I called it a day. Update at 9:15PM: A fellow Hawk-watcher found the fledgling in a Gingko tree near where I last saw him.