Red-tailed Hawk landing on nest, Bobst Library, NYU, New York City

Fledgling hunts and kills a rat – July 18th, 2015

It was a pretty exciting day today. I got to see F2 hunt for the first time. I suspected that it had caught the rodent I saw it eating a couple of days ago but didn’t see the catch with my own eyes.

A man playing with his dog saw the fledgling on the grass and allowed his dog to get close to the fledgling, which made me and fellow Hawk-watchers quite nervous.

We were all the more nervous because the dog’s leash was dropped several times and the pup was allowed to walk freely on the grass.

The fledgling was wary of the dog as well but luckily the dog was more interested in its ball than the bird.

The dog owner finally took the dog away, much to our relief!

The rat looked huge:

A man in his late 20s/early 30s walked over to the fledgling, scaring it right into a tree:

Sadie flew overhead at one point, toting a pigeon:

Sadie ate the pigeon.There were several Red Admiral butterflies among the flowers:

The fledgling flew to a few new trees before settling in for a nice, long preen.

I checked to see if the stick the fledgling had played with a couple of days ago (11th photo in that set) had indeed been snapped off the branch the fledgling had been eating on.

I was psyched to see that my suspicions were correct! It’s pretty cool that the fledglings find and make their own toys. 🙂


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