It's winter, which means that should you have time for a stroll in or by a park, it's much easier to spot any hawks who might be lurking about. Late Monday afternoon, just before sunset, I strolled up Riverside Drive in the Morningside Heights neighborhood, and found a red-tailed hawk in Riverside Park between 114th St. and 115th St., about two blocks south of where this past summer's 116th St. nest was (and still is) located.
It was casually watching the area, but not peering around intently as it would if it were hunting. Perhaps it was simply digesting and drying off.
Extreme photo manipulation on Photoshop suggests that the bird was an adult. Although the overall tail color was not obvious because of the gloomy light, there seems to be only a single dark transverse bar near the tip of the tail feathers rather than the multiple stripes of a juvenile's brown tail.
Fifteen minutes later up the street at Grant's Tomb, I found what appeared to be both of the resident pair of adult red-tails going to roost for the night on opposites sides of the walkway leading to the monument. Unfortunately, by that point it was just past sunset, and the light was too poor for photography.
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