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.

I was walking with a fellow birder to Central Park’s Reservoir, and we saw about 50 gulls in the air moving west. I said, “something must have spooked the reservoir gulls”. When we got to the SW corner of the reservoir, this was understatement. Two Bald Eagles were sitting along the divider of the reservoir which is currently covered by only an inch or two of water. in 2022, we had daily visits by Rover when we had ice, and I’ve seen single eagles before on the divider was fully exposed, but I’ve never seen two Bald Eagles on the Reservoir, nor have I seen them wading in the water.

They were both far away from me, and I had to use my scope to take most of the pictures, so the highlights are washed out in most of my photographs. But it was a thrill to see both eagles. One left about a half hour before the other. The one that stayed the longest was banded, but I only saw the bands when the bird flew off, so I couldn’t read them.

On Thursday afternoon, The Linnaean Society of New York hosted a hawk watch on the steps near Belvedere Castle. While it was a bit too late in the season to get Broad-winged Hawks, we had lots of raptors, Turkey Vultures, Canada Geese, and one Bald Eagle.

A local American Kestrel showed up on a tree on the opposite side of Turtle Pond and eventually perched on an antenna on Fifth Avenue.