It looks like I lose my dollar, as there was a report of a cathedral red-tailed hawk baby fledging the nest on Saturday afternoon. And this time the report was accurate. I don't know that anyone actually saw the event happen, but around 5:00 or 6:00, hawkwatcher Jeremy found one of the baby hawks perched way below the nest, on the little service area between the chapels of Sts. Boniface and Columba.
Getting a second-hand report of the event, I arrived around 7:00 and not knowing where to look, started checking the chapel rooftops. A good ten minutes later, a couple passers-by notived the fledge perched in the shaded spot between the chapels and pointed him out to the two of us searching.
Perhaps the new fledge had been in hiding, as over the next 45 minutes he occasionally wandered back from the edge of that rooftop where he couldn't be seen.
Meanwhile up in the nest, the two remaining nestlings were pretty much paying no attention to their sib down below. There was plenty of scanning the skies.
And a bit of flapping.
The fledge was generally quiet. A little weirded out, but calm enough to preen now and again. It did look like it would like to find a better spot, perhaps on a chapel roof, as it tried "climbing" a window on the side of St Boniface chapel twice. But no luck.
As sunset approached, the fledge was still in the same spot. All the while, mama Isolde had been perched across the street on a hospital chimney.
The fledgling looked just a wee bit young to me. Jeremy noted as did I that its perch was directly below the nest, so it seems likely that it might have been an accidental fledge, i.e., it slipped and fell. But even so, it's no more than five days early, and perhaps just a couple.
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