I'd been meaning to head uptown for a month or two and check if and which of the old-school red-tailed hawk tree nests might have been destroyed by Hurricane Sandy. Sunday I finally made my way to Highbridge Park. Sure enough, the nest across the road from Swindlers Cove was gone, along with the branches that it had rested on. But other than that, the scene at Highbridge was good.
As I walked up, one hawk was just taking off to the west. But there was George, perched high up a tree about 50 yards northwest of the old nest site. A minute later Martha returned.
She alit clumsily amongst the small twigs and worked her way over to the branch that George was on.
And there they perched almost alongside each other, perhaps enjoying the blue skies and the sun coming over the top of Fort George Hill.
Beside their relative sizes, you can tell which hawk is which because George has a "dirty" belly band.
They were pretty mellow, nothing like the fidgety juvenile I watched in Central Park the day before. So mellow in fact that after 20 minutes I checked the time and decided I might as well head over toward Fort Tryon and see if there was any raptor action along the Hudson.
I'll have to head back up to Swindlers Cove in a few weeks to see where Martha and George decide to build their next nest.
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