I had a wonderful time watching the Riverside Hawks on Sunday.  The juvenile caught two rodents, the mother a squirrel and the father was in his favorite tree by the swamp.

The photos of below and the video contain a great number of images of the rodents being eaten, so if this doesn’t appeal to you, feel free to skip this post.

I seached all of the “regular” spots at Riverside Park on Saturday afternoon for a juvenile hawk only to come up empty handed.  I decided to leave the park via the Hippo Playground and at the top of the hill at 90th Street discovered a juvenile hawk perched in a tree.

As it got dark, the juvenile moved a few times before settling into a Ginko tree as its nighttime roost.  The tree was in the Joan of Arc park at 91st Street.

This is the exact area used by last year’s juvenile. 

The older juvenile hasn’t been seen in over a week.  It most likely has left the parent’s territory to begin its life on its own.

The younger juvenile continues to hang out near the two ballfields south of the café.  It is hunting on its own, but still begs for food when it sees its mother.

While I visited on Saturday, the juvenile eat a pigeon on the ground and later the mother came in an ate a bird on the backstop of one of the ballfields.

Update: After I wrote this, I got a note from another hawk watcher that says the older juvenile may have been seen Sunday.   So I may have spoken too soon.

One of the juveniles and the father spent time around the playground by the river south of the small ballfield before the juvenile spend about an hour on a chain link fence that surrounds the ballfield.

The juvenile drew quite a crowd while it was on the fence.  I have mixed feelings about all of the gawking.  One one hand, it helps educate New Yorkers that we have hawks in the city, but I worry that the crowds stress the juveniles, interrupt their hunting and habituate them to humans.

My Saturday afternoon at Riverside had me finding one of the youngsters on a softball backstop, then had the youngster soaring high over the park, the mother returning to eat on the same backstop, and finally the mother on a streetlamp.

Finding all of the family in on visit is getting increasingly difficult as the juveniles are more independent. 

Later this fall, we should expect the juveniles to take off to live their live’s independent of their parents.  It’s one of the anti-climatic things about hawk watching.  There’s no goodbye party when the kids decide to leave home, they just disappear.

Tonight, I got to see a calm fledgling take it easy for about an hour before going to roost in a tree on the North Lawn.

(Since most of the action is taking place earlier in the day, I’ll be visiting the nest less often on weekdays.)