The Red-tailed Hawks of Washington Square Park, NYC… mostly
This post contains photos I took over the last two days so prepare for an image-heavy account.
I saw the Plaza Male and Octavia (Pale Male’s mate) mating yesterday and today. I had assumed that since she was laying and incubating Pale Male’s egg(s?), that her time copulating with the Plaza Male was over but that is not the case.
March 20th, 2013:
The first Red-tailed Hawk I saw was the Plaza Male carrying a twig while circling and soaring over Central Park’s Grand Army Plaza:
Hooray for the couple! According to Pale Male dot com, Octavia was incubating an egg in Pale Male’s nest Thursday (yesterday). This is wonderful news and I wish their brood the best.
Continue to the full post… “Pale Male and Octavia have an egg in their nest – March 15th, 2013”
What follows is a report from a birding friend who spent a number of hours in Central Park today with Pale Male and his newly-returned kids.
No one in the Central Park birding group could find the two juveniles for most of the morning and early afternoon. But a park ranger told Ranger Rob that Pale Male and his two kids were hanging out together in the ramble, a heavily-wooded area of the park not far from the nest.
The birders saw both kids by the model boat pond (across the street from the nest). The juveniles had fledged to that area the first time they left the nest so their being by the boat pond was an assurance that they knew where they were and were behaving as if they were feeling at home.
The birders also saw Pale Male, his new mate Octavia (so named because she is his eighth mate), and a juvenile flying along 5th Avenue but they weren’t sure if it was one of Pale Male’s babies or a migrating juvenile.
At the moment my friend texted me with these reports, they were watching the male juvenile scanning the bush below him for prey.
I will update this post should new Central Park reports come in.
As far as Washington Square Park is concerned, I did not see either Rosie or Bobby today but a Hawk-watching friend who arrived at the park before me saw Rosie for several minutes. Rosie sat on a lamp post, hunted and ate a mouse in the eastern section of the park and escaped a harassing Peregrine Falcon when she flew into the Bobst Library nest. She left the nest and flew low toward the eastern section of the park a few minutes before I arrived. I and the other WSP Hawk-watchers searched for her all around but we did not find her.