This time of year, it’s common to see one of the adults hunting at dusk, eat their bedtime snack and then go of to roost.  Tonight this happened just as expected.

The rats come out just before dusk making hunting easy for the Red-tailed Hawk.  Unfortunately, local squirrel lovers grossly overfeed the squirrels in this area and end up supporting a large rat colony. 

The Washington Square Park hawks have been spending time building an alternate nest above the Angelica Theater at Mercer and Houston.  At sunset, one of the hawks was on the balcony of above the new nest.  (Hawks are known to build alternative nests and not use them, so I would suspect that come spring the activity will once again shift back to Washington Square Park.)

It took some time to find them, but I was able to see both Washington Square Adults this evening.  I started in the courtyard of the Silver Towers buildings looking at the building on Mercer and Houston where the hawks had recently brought nesting materials.  (Building an alternate nest is not unusual, and this pair has brought materials to other sites in the late summer and early fall.)

Without warning, Rosie appeared flying up Broadway from below Houston and I followed her to a building at 4th and Greene Street.  Then I saw Bobby fly east on Washington Place.  After a few minutes Rosie joined him and both were on top a roof shed at Mercer and Washington.  At dusk they both flew north to roost, but I lost track of them.

I had dinner down at The Cardinal on 4th Street tonight and made a quick trip to Tompkins Square Park.  I found one of the fledglings down on 8th Street and an adult on the flag pole. It was nice to be back with New York City hawks.

The Washington Square Park fledglings have been spending time on top of buildings around Mercer Street the last few days.  On Sunday afternoon both were on a building railing at Washington Street and Mercer Street (Psychology Building of NYU).  Both fledglings looked to be in good shape.