Friday marked what was probably 17 days since an egg hatched at the red-tailed hawk nest at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Due to the depth of the nest bowl created by the accumulation of sticks over the years, one still can't see the nestlings. Nevertheless, it's apparent they're up there.
Early on a very pleasant Friday evening, it was all quiet at the nest, but belatedly, both parents, Norman and Isolde, were found perched across the street on the roof of St. Luke's Hospital.
Just 20 or 30 feet apart, which in hawk terms is about equivalent to sitting next to each other on the couch to watch TV.
Ten minutes later, Isolde perked up.
But she wasn't heading back to the nest. No, she had decide to switch to one of the spires along the nave at the cathedral.
Where she stayed for the next half hour or more. Some preening of her breast feathers, some looking around.
Close to 7:00, Norman departed from his perch on the hospital rooftop railing, an event which might have gone un-noticed except that Isolde glanced over to watch him leave. A minute or two later she too departed her perch on the spire, only to be found over on a different section of hospital roof, snacking on a cached morsel.
From there she hopped about the hospital roof a bit, first scraping the schmutz off her beak on a cornice.
Then hopping up to a railing for just a moment, and from there leaping off...
To perch on one of the rooftop decorative urns for a couple minutes.
And finally, a flight back to the nest.
What looked like a quick 5-minute feeding ensued, with Isolde paying to attention to at least two different targets in the nest bowl. And then as light faded, she shifted over to the far side to watch the nestlings and the sunset light over Harlem.
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