Hawks in my neighborhood – January 12th, 2019

I was treated to a special sight today; two juvenile Red-tailed Hawks in my neighborhood! One of the them was sitting digesting a pigeon meal while another was circling above, hunting pigeons.

My better half had been running errands and spotted a bunch of pigeon feathers on the sidewalk. The feathers were followed like bread crumbs up to a juvenile Red-tailed Hawk sitting on a fire escape above the sidewalk. This Hawk was located around the corner from our apartment.

I loaded my camera and came out to check the Hawk out:

What a handsome bird! Its crop was fully engorged with its pigeon meal. You could see pigeon bits still in its talons:

Some of the remains on the sidewalk:

Here we were watching the young Hawk while a dozen people would walk right under it, completely unaware of the huge raptor sitting above them.

A small pigeon flock was circling above. The flock approached a building corner to land but turned on a dime and fled away in a scatter, afraid to land:

I have seen this behavior before in Washington Square Park. A flock would go to land in a tree but would immediately about-face and fly away from the tree in a panic. I’d then see that the reason they acted this way was because one of the resident Hawks was sitting in the tree!

Well, I watched these pigeons behave the same exact way. Within seconds I saw that they had been fleeing a different juvenile Red-tailed Hawk that was circling above:

This Hawk should be easy to identify again in the near future, before its missing tail feathers grow back in:

Watching the other Hawk circle above:

These two youngsters did not engage each other. The flying one surely saw the sitting one directly below it. This became another one of those unsolvable city Hawk mysteries: What would explain their cordial tolerance of each other? Did they know each other from before? Were these two siblings?

The flying Hawk traveled northeast of us:

I caught the other juvie looking at me:

*Wink*:

The other youngster came back and flew around the block east of us:

Sparrows nesting nearby:

Hawks will sit and relax a while as they digest. All looked well so I left the Hawk after another several minutes. I have seen juvenile Hawks in my neighborhood for years so maybe I’ll run into these youngsters again.