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

Nest switches, new perches, and late day mating – March 24th, 2020

It rained all day yesterday but the sky was bright and blue today. The rain must have hit the spot because the Washington Square Park trees were bursting with new buds and the lawn grass was coming in bright green.

Juno was sitting on top of the ConEd tower when I arrived:

He flew to the park 48 minutes later.

He did a bunch of circling around the northern side of the park at first:

He landed on a perch I’d never seen him on before; some scaffolding on the NYU building at the southeast corner of the park (Education building):

He sat there for a good 7 minutes scanning below him before diving down out of sight.

He brought some plant matter to the nest a couple of minutes later. I’m quite sure he got this stuff from an apartment terrace. He’s raided terraces/rooftops before for nest material.

Into the nest:

Sadie got up from the eggs, looked around a little, then flew right to the cross west of the nest:

Happy shake:

Flying off after a minute:

She flew east out of the park.

Juno went right into the nest:

A while passed and it looked obvious Sadie was out on an extended break so that was the end of my visit.

I had to run an errand near the park later in the afternoon (sans camera) and spotted Juno perched on a different part of the scaffolding on the Education building.

He got a twig from a park tree then brought it to the nest. Sadie flew out of the nest seconds later. Juno soon followed her out.

He then mated with Sadie on the 2 Fifth Avenue building before Sadie returned to the nest.

Posted in Special Topic: Mating
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6 thoughts on “Nest switches, new perches, and late day mating – March 24th, 2020

  1. Hey, I’m glad you were able to get out for some hawking. Always love following your blog, but especially now. Thank you.

    1. It was lovely to see them after so long. The camera-less Juno encounter later in the day was especially nice because there was only one other person around and he never noticed the nearby Hawk. So me and my friend had a ‘private’ visit with Juno. Thank you, Peggy!

  2. I love reading your red-tailed hawks blog. I feel like I’m with you there. And your photography is extraordinary.

  3. I have some ok pictures of one of them on our terrace at 1 Fifth Ave. He (or she) had a still alive rat in his talons as he stood on the parapet wall for a few minutes. The rat was squeaking up a storm, quiet raucous! If you want me to send you the pictures, I would be happy to.

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