927 5th Avenue Red-tailed Hawks Archives - Page 88 of 90

August 13, 2006December 20, 2020927 5th Avenue Red-tailed Hawks

Pale Male Catches And Eats A Mouse

Warning Graphic Content! If you’re not interested in seeing a mouse get caught and eaten, you might want to view these pictures of Pale Male from Friday.

Pale Male patiently waited in a tree branch on Sunday evening for supper to arrive near Cleopatra’s Needle.

I was pleased to see the photographers who watch Pale Male regularly, made sure he had an unobstructed flight path to his common hunting areas.

After hunting too fast for me to capture the kill, he jumps up on a low hanging tree branch bringing a few blades of grass along with his prey.

He takes about ten minutes to consume the mouse.

At the end, he swallows what’s left in one huge gulp.

He then used a number of tree branches as “toothpicks” to clean his beak.

August 11, 2006December 20, 2020927 5th Avenue Red-tailed Hawks

Pale Male Eye Candy

Pale Male spent the early evening on Friday, just north of Cleopatra’s Needle, which is west of the Metropolitan Museum.

August 6, 2006December 25, 2020927 5th Avenue Red-tailed Hawks, Other Animals, Other Birds

Couldn’t Find What I Was Looking For. . .

I went birding on Sunday in hopes of finding the St. John the Divine hawks or the 1st Year Red-tailed hawk, Ben Cacace and Lincoln Karim have been seeing in Central Park. I didn’t find either of them.

I did see some old favorites however, the Red Squirrel (the only one in Central Park), Lola, the female Red-tailed Hawk from the 5th Avenue nest, who was on the NE tower of the Beresford keeping an eye on a Kestrel pair on the SE tower, and the two young Green Herons.

July 15, 2006December 20, 2020927 5th Avenue Red-tailed Hawks

Beresford Apartments

On my way from the Green Herons to Morningside Park on Friday, I got to see Pale Male. He first flew around the Beresford, landed on some scaffolding, got harassed by another bird. He then perched lower on the building, and as I left the park went east being chased by the bird that had harassed him earlier.

June 7, 2006December 20, 2020927 5th Avenue Red-tailed Hawks

Don’t Believe The Newspapers!

An A.P. wire-story about Pale Male and Lola, picked up nationwide, stated that the Red-tail pair have abandoned their Fifth Avenue nest and have switched to the Beresford building at 81st and Central Park West. I’m sure a naive reporter after seeing reports of the nest/egg abandonment at 5th Avenue, pictures of Pale Male carrying twigs on Lincoln Karim’s website and reports of the hawks spending their time on the Beresford, jumped to an improper conclusion in order to have an excuse to write a story about the rich and famous.

It’s important not to mix these three concepts, perches, roosts and nest, when discussing Red-tailed Hawks. The dictionary defines them as:

perch, noun, a thing on which a bird alights or roosts, typically a branch or a horizontal rod or bar in a birdcage.

roost, noun, a place where birds regularly settle or congregate to rest at night, or where bats congregate to rest in the day.

nest, noun, a structure or place made or chosen by a bird for laying eggs and sheltering its young.

For Red-tailed Hawks, these are three very distinct things.

Pale Male and Lola have a number of perches, including two favorite places on the towers of the Beresford. For years, they’ve spent many an afternoon at the Beresford, especially during the winter months.

Pale Male and Lola usually roost overnight in trees. The exception is during nesting season, when Lola will sleep on the nest from about a week before she lays her eggs until a day or two after her children fledge.

For Red-tails a nest is a place to raise their young. Outside of nesting season, they will check up on it daily, but it is not a place they will usually perch or sleep in.

Pale Male and Lola’s increased use of the Beresford is just business as usual. We’ll only know if they’re going to switch nest sites in February. Until then, don’t write off 5th Avenue.