New York City has a large population of Peregrine Falcons. My favorite pair has a scrape on Broadway Bridge, easily accessible by the 1 subway train. It’s the Marble Hill-225th Street stop. The bridge is a drawbridge over the Harlem River and allows you some of the closest views of Peregrine Falcons in the city. This year, their scrape is situated so that you can see the eyasses being fed.
While searching for a possible Red-tailed Hawk nest, I saw this American Kestrel at 133rd and Broadway. It was a fun find, because I was able to I.D. it without binoculars based on its tail pump and silhouette. As you have more experience as a birder, lots of little clues just start to click in automatically.
Now if I could only understand shorebirds…
I’m in London on a business trip without my birding equipment, however I had a pleasant experience with a pair of Peregrine Falcons just the same on Saturday afternoon.
I’m staying in a hotel with a view of the British Library and the St. Pancras train station. As I was waiting for the elevator, a Peregrine flew within twenty feet of the hotel. After a few minutes, it flew back and perched on St. Pancras’s clock tower.
I left the hotel and went in search of the Peregrine. I couldn’t find it, but after about ten minutes saw a Peregrine fly towards a construction crane at Kings Cross. It landed on top of another Peregrine and they copulated. The male then returned to the St. Pancras clock tower.
Londoners were like many New Yorkers, that Saturday afternoon. Other than myself, no one seemed to be aware that birds of prey were in the area, as they rushed to get their trains or the underground.
On Christmas Week, I was in Southwestern Florida and visited J.N. “Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge and Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary. I was birding casually but had one life bird, a Reddish Egret.
If you wonder why I haven’t been posting lately, I’ve been studying owls this January. The owls are easily disturbed in their winter roost, so I’m postponing reporting about them until the late Spring.
The annual Christmas Bird Count was held in Central Park. The snow storm had tapered off just in time for a nice morning in the park.
Counting in fresh snow was good exercise, although it kept the count numbers down. I birded the Northwest. Highlights included a female Wood Duck and a Great Blue Heron (most likely the same bird Jack Meyer saw earlier in the week on the Lake). Our group had two raptor species, a Cooper’s Hawk and a pair of Red-tailed Hawks.
An unusual species for the count was a Turkey Vulture, with multiple fly overs the park. Speculation was that heavy snow forced the vultures south. The Riverside Park count even had a Bald Eagle. So the weather was a mixed blessing.
My experiences on Friday, had the three same birds, a Cooper’s Hawk, a Red-tailed Hawk and Eastern-Screech Owls, as I had last Sunday.
The Cooper’s Hawk had a full crop and perched in the same spot for over an hour, west of the Wildflower Meadow. Another birder had found the Cooper’s Hawk and we went through all of the I.D. helpers listed in Kenn Kaufman’s Advanced Birding chapter on The Accipiters. Variances between a perched Cooper’s Hawk and Sharp-shinned, include size, tail shape and size of white band at the tip, eye placement and relative size, blackish cap on the Cooper’s vs. a more uniform color that extends to the neck on the Sharp-shinned. It was a fun discussion.
The Red-tail was closer to the Pool side of the Loch, and then flew off to the northwestern edge of the North Meadow. It continued on towards the south, and may be one of the hawks that has also been seen in the 90’s on Central Park West. It would be great if a pair of hawks built a nest in the North Meadow again. This would be a great time for a pair to try. With the “Cathedral” pair having shifted their territory in a more northerly direction, now would be the time for a new pair to claim the northern end of the park.
The Eastern-Screech Owls were seen after we had given up finding them. Both owls were in low brush and hard to spot, but the male ended up flying up to bright light by a roadway. He’s usually shy, so it was great to see him out in the open. Our hunt for their winter cavities continues, without any success.
