Mama Sadie Hawk delivers food for the fledgling – June 17th, 2019

Juno was the only Red-tailed Hawk I saw for the first hour of my visit to Washington Square Park.

He was first seen sitting on an NYU flag pole outside the east side of the park:

A fellow Hawk-watcher spotted him sitting on a Two Fifth Avenue apartment terrace 45 minutes later:

That building sits outside the north side of the park. It was not long before he dove off and descended low toward the buildings lining the park:

I searched for him where I thought he generally might have landed but had no luck finding him.

Another hour and a half of searching commenced. I was searching for him, Sadie, and the fledgling who was released back into the park yesterday all at once.

I finally spotted Juno again. This time he was on One Fifth Avenue, the building across the street from Two Fifth.

A Mockingbird was not charmed to see him and would dive-bomb him:

My Hawk-watcher friend from earlier told me they heard the fledgling crying when they were leaving the park via the northwest corner.  I rushed over and followed the crying sounds of the fledgling.

The action really picked up now. I saw Juno and another Hawk follow each other closely near the top of the building which sits outside the northwest corner of the park.

I then saw that Juno was following Sadie who had food in her talons. I was so glad to see Sadie because I hadn’t seen her since Friday. And the big plus was she looked like she was making a food delivery to the fledgling!

She circled over a low building top and zoomed right over to it:

Juno circling nearby:

Sadie landed on the corner of the building for a minute before descending to the rooftop:

The “feed me” crying stopped as soon as she dropped the food off on the rooftop. So I deduced that the fledgling was up on that rooftop and eating what she delivered. I would have preferred to see the fledgling up there and eating but I think it’s safe to say what I observed was a food drop.

She spent 25 seconds out of sight up there. Juno had descended to the roof too but only for a second before flying in a mad dash to another building top, screaming as he flew.

Sadie hopped up to the corner of the building again:

Juno sitting nearby:

He then flew low over the building top before landing near Sadie:

Juno on the left, Sadie on the right:

Sadie would look over her shoulder and look down onto the rooftop (and at the fledgling eating?).

Sadie moved further along the roof and landed on a railing.

Looking back toward either Juno, the fledgling, or both:

Juno left that building and flew eastward.

Picking her talons clean:

Sadie flew to the building outside the northwest corner of the park.

She was quickly harassed by dive-bombing Kestrels:

This building is parallel with the fledgling’s building. She would have been able to look down at the flegling from her perch. She was three buildings west of the fledgling if I recall the layout correctly.

She left her perch after 25 minutes and flew eastward. She then joined up with Juno and circled with him for a minute before they went their separate ways.

Juno on the top of One Fifth Avenue again:

Juno flew a railing below Sadie’s previous perch 4 minutes later:

You might be able to see some of the light rain that was falling at the time:

He flew further west 6 minutes later:

I waited around for close to two hours for the fledgling to make himself visible after the food drop but he never popped up before I left for the day. But I left feeling this was a positive development; it appeared that Sadie found the fledgling, went right back to feeding it, and perched nearby for a long while.