Expectations

Although many eyes have been watching the red-tailed hawk nest on Fifth Ave. for signs of a hatch which had been expected this past week, there are seven other nests in Manhattan. Someone asked Marie Winn when the others might be expecting. Here's a summary that I wrote up and which Marie posted earlier today.

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Marie,

About the other red-tailed hawk nests in Manhattan and when egg hatching might be expected:

The Cathedral nest should not see a hatch until after April 26 and possibly not until the first of May. The female, Isolde, did not start to brood until some time between March 26 and 30. Although this seems late, it believe it is typical of the nest, as the dates were about the same last year, and first fledge last year and the year before were on the same date [June 11]. I suspect the shady, cool location at the Cathedral delays egg-laying there until the days are a little warmer. It probably didn't help that this year there was a last minute change of resident male hawk.

The nests at Houston St. , Riverside Park, Highbridge Park, and Inwood Park, all had females reported brooding before the Cathedral. Without doublechecking others' blogs (i.e., Bruce and Lincoln's websites), I think all four of them had mothers reported brooding 7-10 days before the Cathedral nest. Consequently, for all four of these, I think the hatching window could open any day now. I'll note that both at Highbridge and Inwood, feeding behavior or an actual nestling was observed last year on April 20.

Bruce checked on Highbridge yesterday [Thursday] but did not see any signs of a hatch yet.

I lost track of Seventh Ave., but as best I recall, Charlotte had not yet been reported as being on the nest at the time brooding began at the Cathedral. So start of May for Seventh Ave.?

And as for the new nest at CCNY, it's a real tough spot to observe. I never heard any reports at all about when the female there may have started brooding, so it's anyone's guess as to when there might be a hatch.

4/15-4/16, Flicker, Kestrel, Egret and a Hawk Switch-Off

Stormin' Norman, Early Wednesday Evening

Tuesday:
No sign of the hawks when I passed by the Cathedral at about 6:00 p.m., and no interesting birds at the Morningside Park pond when I passed by there. So over to the northwest corner of Central Park to see if I could either spot one of the Cathedral hawks hunting or perhaps the juvenile red-tail who's been hanging about the Pool recently.

Lots of bird sound atop the Great Hill and the North Woods. Who's that perching on the side of a tree and peering at the bark? A woodpecker? It pokes its head out of the shade and it's a male yellow-shafted northern flicker.

Bird guides say flickers like to eat ants from the ground, but this one is knocking on the tree a bit.

But in a rather desultory fashion. None of the authoritative manner I'm used to hearing woodpeckers apply. If I didn't have my hearing aids in I wouldn't hear him at all.

Otherwise, no particularly interesting bird sightings. Plenty of curious bird calls, i.e., the kind I don't recognize.

Passing by the Cathedral nest site at 7:30 I notice a small bird land on the scaffolding directly above the red-tail nest. Wondering what kind of bird is dumb and/or courageous enough to land so close to a hawk nest, I snap off a pick before it takes off a few seconds later. Ah! A little help from Photoshop reveals it's a kestrel!?

(PS. James later told me that he had seen the red-tail Norman hunting down in the Douglass Houses at 104th St. around 7:00.)

Wednesday:
Again no sign of hawk activity when I pass by the nest around 6:00. But today there's a great egret in the park pond. Barely have I arrived then it tries to spear a fish, and goes so deep that it almost looks like it's about to go swimming. It comes up with a good-sized goldfish.

It takes some work, but the egret manages to get the fish lined up so that it can go down in a single gulp.

The egret hangs around the north end of the pond for another 10 minutes, perched on a submerged log (the pond water level has been fairly high the last few days). Perhaps it hears something, because it takes off and then after circling around a couple times for altitude, it joins another egret flying past. The pair head off together toward Central Park, possibly to Harlem Meer.

I depart also, but on climbing back up to Morningside Drive, I see a hawk fluttering onto the scaffolding by the nest.

Based on the coloring, it's a bit hard to tell if this is Isolde returning from dinner or else Stormin' Norman coming in to take a turn at egg duty. (And give credit to James for giving the name Norman a bit more pizzazz.) Initially I suspect it's Norman, but when later viewing pix I finally remember to check the eye color. They're dark and deep, so it's Isolde.

She perches to the right of the nest for a minute, then switches over to the left side.

She eyes things to see if she can simply hop into the south entrance, but after a moment leaps off the scaffolding...

flies up to 113th St. and then does a U-turn and flies into the north side of the nest. She looks down to see how things are going, then around.

Once things meet with her approval, she hops in and instantly Norman pops out of the south side of the nest. He flies up to the hospital roof and perches on an eave. (Again, I intiially thought this might be Isolde, and perhaps there was a meal left there for her.) Then up to the pointy roof to get some air under his wings.

And then leaps.

He curls around to the north and out of sight behind the hospital.

And indeed that seems like a good time to leave.

4/13, Kiddies Cluster at Cloisters, plus Riverside Peregrines

I'm still wondering if there's a ninth red-tail nest in Manhattan that has gone undiscovered. So Sunday I again headed uptown to check around Fort Tryon and points south. It turned out that the A train wasn't running north of 168th St. and I ended up on a shuttle bus which dropped me off at Broadway and Dyckman. Barely had I hiked up the park paths to reach the parking area on the north side of the Cloisters at 3:40 than I looked up to see two crows going after a red-tail.

The red-tail didn't seem overly concerned but hung in there, and even seemed to be chasing a crow at times.

The action stayed pretty much directly over the Cloisters, only moving higher in the sky as the trio circled about.

Still higher, and the birds get smaller and smaller.

Until finally the crows apparently decided that they were too high up, or that the red-tail was so high that he didn't threaten whatever they were protecting. They dropped out and the red-tail circled about some more on its own.

Then it drifted off to the southeast, finally disappearing somewhere in the general direction of George Washington HS. Hmmmmm, do you think that red-tail was George from the Highbridge nest? No, because a close look at pix indicated a year-old's transverse-striped tail.

Five minutes later over on the south side of the Cloisters, a red-tail appeared, flying in from the south. I briefly lost it over the building itself but a couple minutes later, it re-appeared. Well, maybe it was the same one, or maybe not. It might have been the same hawk as a couple minutes ago, but it wasn't the same one as ten minutes earlier, as this was a juvenile with one or two tail feathers missing.

And... it's not alone. No, not the crows. Another red-tail.

And while I'm watching these two circle close to each other, it looks like there are two more just north, above the Cloisters. But no way to get them all in the same field of view.

The scene lasted just another 10-20 seconds before one of the hawks peeled off to the south. As I watched it, the other one or three disappeared to the north. Damn.

Ten minutes later as I was standing at the flagpole overlook, a red-tail again appeared from the south, hovering just 40 feet overhead. Then zoom! It bombed down into the woods by the dog run on the east side of the bluff.

I wandered about Fort Tryon for another 40 minutes, but it seemed that the hawks were gone or in hiding. This mourning dove seemed confident that there was no hawk by the dog run.

But there was one last red-tail sighting to make. As I exited the south end of the park on the trail alongside the highway, I looked up and there it was, kiting in the breeze near Mother Cabrini High School. After a minute it disappeared behind an apartment building rooftop below 190th St.

And that seemed to be it for the day. Despite a long walk along Riverside Drive and the Hudson shoreline down to Morningside Heights, nary a raptor to be seen.

But wait, maybe? From around 134th St., I could see something large circling over Riverside Park by Grant's Tomb. Too far to be sure what it was, but it was either a red-tail (perhaps the juvie from Columbia) or else one of the Riverside Church peregrines. If the former then presumably the latter would eventually chase it off.

All quiet when I reached the church, but when I stopped at 6:25 to take a pic of a statue on the facade at the corner of 120th St... Zing! Directly overhead, two large birds seemed to collide. The action was too quick and the lighting too poor to immediately figure out what had happened, but the camera revealed all.

The two Riverside peregrines. Mama must have left the scrape for a bit, as I'm assured that she probably laid her eggs a couple weeks ago. One suggestion was that this was a mid-air food transfer from her mate.

And exit to Sunday dinner, for both peregrine and me.