4/27, A Quick Visit to CCNY

A very dismal day, overcast and just plain dim. But before dinner I made an effort to check in on the remaining two Uptown red-tailed hawk nests.

First I cursed myself for arriving at the CCNY campus a half hour later than planned, leaving very little time to hang about. But my timing turned out to be impeccable. Barely had I walked around to St. Nicholas Terrace at 5:35 and thought, "Why hunt in the park below? You'd nail your prey and then you'd have a long climb to get back up to the nest." And then the CCNY male flew over the roof of the south wing of Shepard Hall (i.e., from the CCNY campus, rather than up from the park) and alit on the edge of the nest.

He and the female "chatted" for a moment, both hunched over and looking in each other's direction. Then he looked around for a moment, this way and that.

And leapt from the nest.

And flew around to the next corner of the Shephard Hall tower.

Landed on a projection.

Looked around for a minute.

Then took off again.

And flew off south or southwest. I lost him behind treetops within seconds.

Afterwards, the female's behavior indicated that food had been delivered. But... I couldn't decide if she was just feeding herself or feeding nestlings.

First she seemed to be standing in the middle of the nest, peering out.

Soon she shifted over to stand on the left side of the nest with her head pointed inward. She was moving around like she was eating or feeding nestlings, and all I could see was her rear end and wings tips sticking out. This lasted for a few minutes -- a quick meal or a quick feeding -- before she appeared to settle down. But the position she assumed was odd. She seemed to be sitting across the back side of the nest, her rear end still sticking out just a bit. It would occasionally wiggle.

And so she remained until I left 10 minutes later.

Walking south, I soon passed through Morningside Park. Still no sign of Hedda the turkey after seeing her all the time a month ago. Both geese out on the pond, and it looks like the female has covered her eggs with vegetation while she's away. One mallard drake around, but if there's a duck nest, I haven't figured out where it is.

And up to the corner of Morningside Drive and 113th. The cathedral nest looks quiet. No sign of Isolde, not even the tip-top of her head peeking through the twigs. Of course, no sign of Stormin' Norman -- he doesn't seem to hang around more than a moment when he is there.

Isolde started brooding at the cathedral nest between March 26 and 30, so we're now entering her hatch window. I suspect it would be later in the week than earlier.

4/26, Hatches at Highbridge, Inwood and Riverside

This past week was the hatch window for at least four Manhattan red-tailed hawk nests, and on Saturday I visited three of them and saw evidence of nestlings at all of them, including one clear view of and one glimpse of a fuzzy baby hawk head.

Highbridge:
Bruce reported on Thursday that he found both George and Martha perched on the edge of the nest and looking inward like they had a new nestling to raise. I arrived at Highbridge Park just before 4:00 on Saturday and found Martha sitting high in the nest. I also found that they'd been doing some re-decorating as there was a leafy stick messing up the view a bit.

WIthin a couple minutes of my arrival, Martha stood up on the far side of the nest and began what was obvious feeding behavior. But try as I might, it seemed like I could not find a spot from which I could see a fuzzy little head reaching for food. The hawks had woven a bag into the nest which blocked the view.

But on reviewing pix on my computer, and on the second and third passes at that, I realized that a few pix revealed a nestling. A couple, inconclusively, showed a fuzzy edge to the left edge of the obstructing bag, but one revealed a little tawny head just sticking out to the side.

And that pic also demonstrated that there must be at least two nestlings. The fuzzy head is to the left, but mama is looking at a baby to the right.

The feeding went on for close to 15 minutes. Sometimes mama would take a momentary break and look around while the babies digested their meal.

And she'd look down to see how they were doing.

Look up again, and stare at the photographer 75 feet away.

And although I know it's just the camera angle, once it sure looked like she was smiling.

TIme for a few more bites for the kids.

And as the breeze picked and ruffled the bag, feeding slowly came to a close.

At 4:12, Martha sat back down on the edge of the nest, where she remained for the rest of my visit. At least this week it was relatively peaceful, the usual traffic noise from down the hill, and the cardinals chirping in the trees. But thankfully no helicopters! Just one half noisy Circle Line boat passing up the Harlem River.

After 4:30 I was pondering my escape as a homeless guy who apparently hides his stuff somewhere in the area passed by and wanted to talk, and talk, and talk. (He was one of only two passers-by the entire time.) But I was able to elude his attention when George, the red-tail papa flew over, and I jumped to shoot some pictures. George circled once or twice over the river, but then retreated to circling the park area at the top of the bluff.

And after a minute he was gone. Just past 4:45 I left also.

Inwood:
I wasn't quite sure whether I'd visit Inwood Hill Park, but on exiting Highbridge and heading toward the Dyckman street subway station, it seemed that the weather was good enough that I could spend a bit of time at Inwood and still be able to get an hour of decent light down at Riverside. I arrived at what seemed to be the best Inwood viewing sight just past 5:20, and despite the distance could see without binoculars or camera that the Inwood mother was sitting up in her nest.

I angled about for a few minutes to see if anywhere else had a good view, but unless there's a spot out in the middle of the soccer field with an angle, this was the spot.

And then at 5:30 while I was watching the nest with binoculars, mama looked down on one side of the nest and then at the other, and a moment later a fuzzy baby poked up!

I was stunned enough that it took me a moment to think I should grab for camera hanging on the fence post and shoot some pix. Thankfully, the baby kept its head up for a half minute. It even turned just a bit so that its little beak was visible.

And then it sat down, and only a glimpse of white fuzz through the branch sticks provided any indication that it was up there.

Riverside:
Stepped off the subway to find that the skies over the 80s were much gloomier than the 210s. But luck was with me, because even as I approached the nest to find seemingly all quiet, the female was deciding to get up and look around.

And after looking around for a couple minutes, and then staring at the bottom of her nest, she began a feeding.

WIth the usual pauses to look around.

And even an open-mouthed stare upwards. Did dad fly past behind me?

The feeding was shorter than that at Highbridge, no more than six or seven minutes, and then she sat back down. Sitting high, of course, so she's now more visible to the scads of potential hawkwatchers passing by.

Spring Progresses

Last week may be my favorite week of the year. It's when the flowering trees max out and only a few have started to shed their petals. By the weekend, flowers were giving way to green buds. Nevertheless, some flowering trees are still hanging in there today, such as the one in the above pic located in the close at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

No sign of activity at the red-tail nest at the cathedral when I've gone by during the past two days. Stormin' Norman has been out wherever it is that he hunts, and I assume Isolde was hunkered down on her eggs, which should hatch sometime between this Saturday and the following. Two other city red-tail nests in Queens and the Bronx have already had hatches reported, and I suspect that two or three of the other Manhattan nests may have had hatches within the last day or so.

I did find one mama sitting on her nest today. It looks like Morningside Park will have its first set of Canada goslings in two years.

4/19, Riverside Switch-Offs

Saturday after visiting the Highbridge red-tail nest, I headed down to the Upper West Side to see the new Riverside nest. Due to its location, it had plenty of hawkwatchers already present, but few were actually able to see much because the female was hunkered down in the nest.

At 6:05, 15 minutes or so after I'd arrived, and most of the hawkwatchers had left, the male flew in and landed in a tree overlooking the heavily used path.

He wasn't carrying any food, but just looked around for a moment.

Then shifted branches.

Preened a bit and scratched.

Perhaps preening is a sympathetic behavior, as just then the female sat up in the nest and also started preening.

The male then began a slow-motion circuit of the area, first flying to another tree in the traffic island in which the nest is located, fluttered around the branches, then after a couple minutes flew over to a tree near Riverside Drive.

Fluttered around in the branches some more, changed trees. Rinse, repeat. Finally, 15 minutes after he entered the area, the male flew over to the nest.

A switch-off ensued, with the female popping up and flying over to a tree about 200 feet away, directly above a family group having a picnic and paying soccer. She stayed there for at least 5 minutes, but disappeared when I wandered over to the nest for a minute.

The only "good" view of the nest involved looking through the branches of another tree, which made it difficult to get good pix of anything up there except when one of the hawks sat straight up. Even just an egg rotation was difficult to see.

At about 6:55, the female returned to the area, first flying into a tree near Riverside Drive. She was obviously carrying food. Either something not very large or else something no longer in its entirety (i.e., leftovers). She noshed for a minute, then flew over the nest.

A hawk confab followed, as she checked out the premises to make sure dad hadn't messed anything up while she was gone.

He on the other hand was apparently inspecting the food she carried over.

The male then flew off, presumably with the food, as he landed in a tree near the picnic tables and spent a couple minutes eating and then wiping his beak. Meanwhile, she hunkered down in the nest.

I began to pack up, as the light was about shot due to the lateness and because of the clouds that had moved in. While I talked with a couple dogwalkers for a few minutes, the male hawk took off for the evening, perhaps to go to roost.

P.S.: No real hawkwatching report for Sunday as I went up to Fort Tryon park and only made one possible sighting. While I was in the Cloisters herb garden and looking out into the park, a very large bird flew into a treetop a hundred yards away. I didn't have the long lens on my camera at the time, and so can't be sure, but the pix I did take suggested that the bird was dark brown and had a light breast. So it seems more likely to have been a hawk than a crow.

4/19, An Hour in Highbridge

SInce the hatching window is opening for so many Manhattan red-tailed hawk nests, it's time to start checking in on some of them to see what's up. And Saturday was a good day for it, with temps in the low 70s and partially cloudy skies for most of the day. The only problem was the seemingly constant thunder of helicopters overhead.

So up to what may be my second favorite nest: Highbridge.

Barely had I arrived at 3:30 and noticed Martha acting a little antsy then she stood up and looked up the Harlem RIver.

Looked up toward GW High.

And then zip! She flew north along the path and disappeared into the trees, leaving the nest unattended.

While she was gone, I tried maneuvering around to see if I could find a higher vantage point where I could into the nest bowl, but no luck. Less than 5 minutes later, Martha was back. She stood for a moment, eying the contents of the nest, then looked around at the underbrush below.

And then plopped down in the nest.

I maneuvered around some more, again looking for a good vantage and found a spot on the "bleachers" along the path where I could sit down and even stretch out a bit. My, it's easier to maintain a stake-out on a hawk nest when you have a comfy spot and the weather's nice.

3:45 and it looks like it may just be an afternoon of watching Martha look around, and often looking back at me. She doesn't think much of my effort to imitate the two cardinals I can hear chirping near-by. (That and the sound of traffic along the Harlem River Speedway are about all one can hear around here. And the helicopters.)

But at 3:48, she stands back up, stretches and preens.

Glare at another helicopter going over.

And peers at the bottom of the nest. I wonder if the eggs are all on the south side of the nest, as that's where she always seems to be looking. Maybe there's some movement inside one of them?

And then sits back down.

4:08: She stands back up, peers at the bottom of the nest for a moment and then peers down the river.

And then takes off. Martha circles around a few times over the river, close to the two big apartment buildings south of Roberto Clemente Park, gaining altitude as she does so.

And at 4:12 she's back, flying in from the north. She must have circled around behind me. Maybe she was checking to see if her mate George was hunting up somewhere along Audubon or St. Nicholas Ave.?

Peers at the eggs for a moment again, and then plops back down.

4:20 passed and I start packing up because I want to check another nest before the end of the day. Martha is in the nest, again glaring at helicopter.

And adios. I wander south along Amsterdam for several blocks, hoping to catch sight of George or perhaps the juvie who's been hangiing around in the 170s, but no luck. Off to Riverside Park.