4/18, Highbridge Hatch? And Inwood?

Saturday the 18th marked five weeks less a day since I thought that the Highbridge red-tailed hawk mama might have laid her first egg, so I headed uptown in the fine weather to see if she had a hatch.

I arrived at the best viewing point (relatively speaking) around 4:30 to find Martha fussing about in the nest. Within a minute though she had plopped back down in the nest. But it did seem that she might be sitting a bit high. The weather being so sunny, I suspected she had had a warm afternoon in the yet leafed-out treetop.

She stayed put for about five minutes, but then was back up and fussing about again. It wasn't feeding behavior. There might have been egg rotation going on, but it seemed more like she was carefully viewing the bottom of the nest. Perhaps someone very small was in there with her?

She gave me a stare, turned around and checked the other side of the nest, then sat back down. There was some more fussing about during the next 15 minutes, then she took off for a flight around the neighborhood.

A minute or two later George visited the nest.

Hhe stared at the bottom of the nest.

Fussed about and sat down.

Another 7-8 minutes later George took off again. The nest was left unattended much longer this time, perhaps as much as five minutes. Martha then returned And her return showed her paying careful attention to the bottom of the nest and fussing about a bit, but no feeding behavior.

Was there a hawk hatchling in there. Although my viewing really wasn't enough to claim so, it turned out that Bruce visited the site a day later and obtained video of a feeding in progress.

On leaving Highbridge Park, I walked up to Inwood Hill to see if the nest there had a hatch. It seemed likely, as Inwood was the first Manhattan red-tail nest with a hatch last year. But the first 15 minutes or so that I had the Inwood nest in view, there was no sign of a hawk at all. Finally, though, a blue jay raucus not far from the nest must have perked up the Inwood mama.

She too went through the routine of looking around the bottom of the nest, fussed a bit but didn't do an obvious feeding, then settled back down facing in a different direction. But the new position left her sitting quite high, much higher than one think she would be in if she was warming eggs.

Several days later I did hear of a feeding being observed at the Inwood nest. Looks like my timing was just bad.