3/8, St. John the Divine

Spring seemed to arrive in New York City on Sunday, and that means time to... work on the nest.

Mid Sunday afternoon I reached the corner of 113th St. and Morningside Drive and started taking pictures of what looked to be the new hawk nest. The idea was to compare pictures to those I had taken previously and see what changes there had been. But wait, the nest seems to be moving.

Yep, there was a hawk fussing about in the nest. I walked around the corner to see if I could get an angle with less backlight, and a hawk jumped out of the nest and flew off towards Central Park. Drat.

Well, let's look around and see where there might be good viewing angles, as it seems all the old ones are no longer any good.

Here's a shot from the corner of Morningside Drive and 110th St.

Where it's evident that there is a hawk in the nest? Indeed, it turns out that both adults were in the nest when I first looked. The male — Norman — had flown off, but the female has stayed put.

Another shot from a little down from 110th St.

(That's part of the condo construction project on the right. Feh.)

And here's the view from the terrace at Manhattan Ave. and 112th St., directly across Morningside Park from the cathedral.

As you can see, the nest has moved about 30 feet, one statue to the left of its former position and 6-8 feet up. The new site is above the statue of St. Peter, which you can recognize by the set of keys in his left hand.

The nest is also just visible from the north slope of the Great Hill in Central Park.

Those viewing spots are all pretty far from the nest. The closest was over 500 feet away. Is there anywhere closer to the nest where you can get a decent view? Yes, there's a spot in the Morningside Park overlook directly across Morningside Drive from the cathedral where you can look up and see who might be looking back.

And there she is again. When I checked back at the cathedral at 6:00, "Madeleine" was apparently just finishing dinner. A few moments later she took off.

Flew up to the hospital roof for a moment and then came back to the top of the condo site.

Where she hung out for five minutes, casing the skies before flying off to the west.

And there it is, a new female hawk at the cathedral and a new nest site. But what to call her? This blog is going with "Madeleine", in honor of the author Madeleine L'Engle, who was librarian at the cathedral for 30 years. It's also the French version of Magdalene, a name that sounds good in connection with a cathedral.