Hints of spring are in the air. The park has some Snowdrops and Forsythia in bloom and the city’s Red-tails have begun to copulate. Today, I caught up with a Cooper’s Hawk, and both of the Fifth Avenue Hawks, Octavia and Pale Male.
On Saturday afternoon, I walked for about five miles through Central Park. I was able to add three more birds to my 2018 Manhattan list, a Ring-Necked Duck (female at the North Gate House of the Reservoir), a Great Cormorant (on the dike in the middle of the Reservoir, a rare visitor to Central Park, but seen frequently off Randalls Island in the winter) and an immature Cooper’s Hawk.
The Cooper’s Hawk was exploring the Loch, a waterway with three waterfalls that flows under the Glen Span and Huddlestone arches from The Pool to the Harlem Meer. It has recently been restored by the Central Park Conservancy. The restoration carefully reshaped the waterway, to provide a mix of currents and depths designed to maximize biodiversity, with the help of a environmental consulting company. Improved landscaping was also added to minimize erosion and run offs from the North Meadow Ball Fields. I’m looking forward to seeing the biodiversity results in a few years.
I started my raptor watching in the North Woods and then worked my way around the reservoir. My first raptor was a Juvenile Red-Tailed Hawk at the Wildflower meadow, who then flew around the Compost Heap. Then it was off to the reservoir, where a Peregrine Falcon has been seen for the last few days near the North Gate House. Then after looking at the nice selection of waterfowl using the open areas of reservoir, I ran into two adult hawks at the South Gate House. By then it was too dark to I.D. the hawks, but it looked like one of them was an intruder and the other was either Pale Male or Octavia.
Central Park was beautiful this afternoon. The snow covered trees and lawns but there wasn’t enough snow to block any of the roads or paths. When I arrived a Red-tailed Hawk was chasing a small Accipiter, which I struggled to decide whether it was a Sharp-shinned Hawk or Cooper’s Hawk. Later in the afternoon, Pale Male was in a tree near the 79th Street transverse.
The Osprey platform out in Scot Cove in Darien, Connecticut only had one chick this year. Nevertheless, it was fun going out to watch the family for a third year.
Today, I got to watch two lovely Peregrine Falcon Fledglings, on the Precipice Cliffs, at Acadia National Park in Maine. The had fledged a few day earlier. They clearly aren’t Urban Hawks, but were fun to watch just the same!
