On the 26th Floor ledge of Weill Cornell–New York Hospital’s Baker Pavilion is a Peregrine Falcon Nest Box. I’ve seen it on the NYC Bird Alliance cruises for members that explore the harbor in the past, but yesterday I thought it might be fun to see if I could watch it from Roosevelt Island. The box faces the East River and the Baker Pavilion is east of York Avenue at 68th Street.

It turns out you can easily watch it with a spotting scope, although you can’t see inside of it due to the angle.

One Peregrine Falcon was perched on the box when I arrived and made a few trips off the box before returning. At some point the falcon went inside the box and a falcon emerged soon thereafter. It was unclear if it was the same bird, or the falcons are already sitting on eggs and this was an exchange between two birds.

I’m looking forward to watching these birds later in the season.

I hadn’t seen falcons on the El Dorado this winter, so I was happy to see a pair of Peregrine Falcons there today. One was on each tower.

I first spotted one circling over the Central Park Reservoir, and watched it land on the building. But then I noticed a second falcon on the other tower.

Watching them take off and land, I could see at least one of them was banded. It’s going to be tough to read the numbers from the ground. It looked like there was both a standard band and a larger colored letter/number band.

On a quiet afternoon out on Governor’s Island, I discovered a Peregrine Falcon on the fence of the sea wall, at the southern tip of the island at Picnic Point. It was amazing to have a Peregrine Falcon at eye level. I had about ten minutes with the bird, before it flew off in the direction of Staten Island.

The Bald Eagle seems to have switched the times of its visits to the Reservoir to earlier in the day to be somewhere between 12:15 and 1:30. I caught up with it early this afternoon, when it was raining lightly.

It took off towards the northwest, flying fairly low. It wasn’t clear if it was off to perch in a tree along the west drive or was leaving the park and flying towards the Hudson.

While the eagle ends up clearing the Reservoir of all the gulls, it doesn’t not seem to be hunting gulls or fish. It simply is wading in the water and drinking.

Late in the afternoon, a Bald Eagle visited Central Park’s Reservoir today. It stayed for at least 30 minutes. It took a few drinks of water and a few American Crows kept an eye on it. When it left it exited the park, it appeared to go west down 96th Street.

The earlier Bald Eagle visits this fall, seemed to be correlated with the warmer days, but today was in the 60’s. I’m happy to have my theory about the eagle visits only being on warm days disproven, as I’d like to see the eagle continue to visit as it gets colder in the late fall and winter.

On the roof of the open building to the west of Belvedere Castle in Central Park was a Merlin late in the afternoon today. It was seen earlier in the week in the same spot, and has also been seen hunting on around the Great Lawn. It stayed perched for over half an hour.