Pale Male and his new mate have new offspring. Food was brought to the nest on Saturday evening and feeding began on Saturday. Today, I watched a feeding and a number of visits by Pale Male. We’ll know how many eyasses there are within the week.
Boring can be at good thing when it comes to a hawk nest. It means all things are working as they should. Sunday night, Pale Male stood guard as Ocatavia kept her eggs warm.
Watching the Fifth Avenue nest takes patience but there is that magical moment when a hawk exchanges places with the other that makes waiting worthwhile.
Tonight, I got to see Octavia return to the nest and replace Pale Male.
Today was a nice day in Central Park. I had the two Red-tailed hawks trying to establish a nest on CPW, (now working on a nest on 322 CPW.) Then a juvenile Red-tailed Hawk on the American Museum of Natural History followed by Sharp-shinned Hawk in the Evodia Field.
My next stop was Fifth Avenue, where Octavia is now brooding. Pale Male was tending to the nest (rearranging twigs as is his habit) and she returned to the nest.
A quick walk down to Central Park South uncovered one Red-tailed hawk there. Seven hawks, not too bad for a brief afternoon visit to the park.
For 2013, I’ve wanted to spend time doing general bird watching rather than just hawk watching and have been birding Central Park, Inwood Hill, Fort Tryon, Battery Park and Randalls Island the last few weeks. My total for New York County is now 65 species, so I’m off to a good start for the year.
Despite my refocusing, I have spent some time at hawk nests. On Saturday, it was Pale Male and his new mate’s nest.
I saw them copulate, visit the nest together and saw Pale Male bring her a gift of a pigeon. The cold weather caused me to miss some of the action with my camera, but I was too busy trying to keep warm.
Before leaving on vacation, I made a brief visit to the park on December 26th. In my brief visit, I had a Barred Owl, a Coopers Hawk and Pale Male.
