I made two detour before visiting Central Park today. First, I saw the nest that had been partially built on the St. Regis Hotel. It’s on the high floor in the northern most oval window facing Fifth Avenue.
Then to went to see if the 310 West 72nd Street nest was active. It was and the female was sitting on the nest and the male escorted a balloon out of the territory.
I got an email for Ben Cacace yesterday about Red-tailed Hawk activity on the Upper East Side. He had seen hawks bringing twigs to a Con Edison smokestack at their steam plant that takes up the block of 74th to 75th Street between the FDR Drive and York Avenue.
I checked it out as soon as could. The hawks are using the middle ring of the three catwalks around the tower. It looks as though they have only just started to bring materials to the smokestack. The position of the potential nest is just a few degrees counter clockwise from the ladder on the west southwest side of the smokestack.
Sometimes hawks change nest locations at the last minute so this isn’t guaranteed to be the final nest location. But if they do end up using this spot, it will be a bit difficult to watch. The best view will be from the roofs of nearby apartment buildings.
It will also be an interesting summer if they do have a successful nest. John Jay seems like too small a park to bring up fledglings. It wonder if the territory includes part of Roosevelt Island, and if they will bring the fledglings across the river over sometime over the summer?
A. Potential Nest Site
B. Perch
C. Perch
D. John Jay Park
Tonight the Barred Owl used the time after fly out to do a “neighborhood watch” and investigate two roosting raptors, a Cooper’s Hawk and a Red-tailed Hawk. The juvenile Cooper’s Hawk decided to fly out of its Spruce tree roost, but the Red-tailed Hawk stayed put. After investigating the neighbors, the owl went back to its normal woods. Sadly, these encounters were impossible to photograph.
While I wasn’t able to film the encounters, I tonight was the first time I noticed the Barred Owl investigating roosting hawks. It stopped by a roosting Cooper’s Hawk, who I heard call. And then I saw it in the same tree of a Red-tailed Hawk who also called.
The evening was also the conjuction of Jupiter and Saturn, which I was able to watch from the top of the path near the Polish Statue around 80th Street.
While this hawk was in Pale Male’s territory, I don’t think this hawk was Pale Male. Pale Male has a clean white neck and his chest pattern reminds me of Oak leaves. This hawk while having a light belly band, seemed a bit different. The markings are more like paint drops.
No mater who it is, I’m glad to see one less rat in the Ramble.
If you told me before I started bird watching in Central Park that it was easy to have a three raptor day, I would have called you a liar. But in the winter it’s fairly easy. On Thursday, I had a Cooper’s Hawk eating a house sparrow, a Red-tailed Hawk eating a Rock Pigeon and a Peregrine Falcon. All within a block of the tennis courts.
New York, New York, what a wonderful place to live and bird.
