I love fledge days.  Washington Square Park had an eyass become a fledgling sometime early in on Friday morning.  I slept in, so I don’t know exactly when!  I got down to the nest in the early afternoon.  Thanks to a report from a building engineer, the fledgling was discovered on the roof of the Goddard Building.  It was on set of stairs to an equipment room which has been a favorite spot for fledglings in past years.  It looked great and seems to have made its first trip without any issue.

The two remaining eyasses stayed on the nest but certainly were interested in looking at what was going on “down below”.

What was really interesting is that the new adult male who has been in territory this week, and whom the female has becoming more tolerant of, charged the fledgling in the late afternoon.  Could it be possible that the new male is responding to the fledgling as a competitor rather than a child to help raise? 

(The fledgling was no worse for wear by the way.  The adult male’s behavior reminded me of fledglings who fight over food or sticks.)

I thought we’d be in for some surprises but this isn’t what I was expecting.  I thought we might see the new male bring food to the fledgling, as a way of bonding with the female on on fledge day.  But instead we saw some aggressive behavior.

I will be interesting to see what happens when the fledgling starts crying for food.  Will this trigger some switch in behavior by the male?

I’m so excited to see how this turns out.  I’m enjoying the front row seat Washington Square Park and the NYU Webcam is giving us to watch hawk behavior.

I spent a few hours in Washington Square Park this afternoon.  The new male was still hanging around and the female was still annoyed by him. He flew around her when she was on the Education Building flag pole and she fluffed up when he came near.  She was near him on One Fifth, but never let him be too close.

(In the pictures, he’s the lighter and smaller adult.)

I would caution anyone not to rush to any judgements about this new male hawk.  It isn’t at all clear he is going to be accepted by the female.  I’m surprised that self-appointed experts have already declared the pair bonded and calculated the age of the hawk based on no first hand observations.  It reminds me of the first year for this nest, when “experts” predicted how the fledge was going to occur and got almost everything wrong.

This year, the NYU nest grants us an extraordinary opportunity to watch the behavior of an adult female who has lost her mate while her eyasses were still on the nest.  We have a camera feed to watch and a territory that is fairly easy to monitor.  Let’s do our best to observe something that isn’t in any book.  Let’s stop spending energy waiting to ask questions of an “expert” or rush to conclusions based on our own romantic ideas of love.  And let’s stop generalizing from the limited examples we have with how hawks replace lost mates and applying them to this nest.  If we insist on having answers to our questions prematurely, we then stop observing.  How sad is that!

Each year, nature shows me something about Red-tailed Hawk behavior I had never noticed before or had a chance to watch.  For me this is what is so exciting about watching Red-tailed Hawks.  They keep revealing more and more about themselves to me as I keep watching them.  That’s one of the joys of behavioral science.

The new adult male in Washington Square Park made visits to a number of buildings on all four sides of the park, including the Education Building, Silver Building, 1 Fifth Avenue (while the adult female was there, he’s on the left), 2 Fifth Avenue, Lipton Hall, Kimmel Center and at dusk the nest briefly.

So, he may end up being Bobby’s replacement. The female didn’t exactly welcome him, but she tolerated him today.

The eyasses look close to fledging.  The first could leave the nest any day now.  One slipped and had to work to to stay on the ledge this afternoon.

It would be great if the male settles in and helps with post-fledging feedings and hunting lessons later in the summer.

I went to see the three eyasses on the nest at Washington Square Park and got a surprise.  Two adult hawks were in the park.  One I hadn’t seen before on the Education Building (rusted beam next to the hawk) and the Adult Female on One Fifth Avenue.   They both flew around and the Adult female didn’t seem happy with the intruder.

The three eyasses could start fledging later this week.  The photographs always show two, but there was often one hiding in either corner of the nest.

With the death of the male, the Washington Square Park nest has a single adult female and three eyasses.  The mother is keeping up with the extra duties and the eyasses are growing at a normal pace.  Today, I caught up with the family.  I saw the mother preening and then just perching most of the time on the southwest corner of the Silver Building a block from the nest.  In the early afternoon, the mother fed they eyasses.

Bobby, the male of the Washington Square Park nest hasn’t been seen for six days.  It is likely that he died.  I first saw him in 2010, when he tried to build a nest on 1 Fifth Avenue.  At the time I worked on the 20th floor of the Flatiron Building and had a view of 1 Fifth.

The next year in 2011, he built a nest with his mate on NYU’s Bobst library. He and his first mate got NYU inspired nicknames, Bobby and Violet.  Bobby for Bobst and Violet for the color of the NYU flag. That year, the New York Times was incubating digital media ideas and as an experiment installed a camera in Dr. Sexton, the president of NYU’s, office.  There were three eggs and only one hatched.  The eyass was nicknamed Pip.  Because of the media exposure, these three hawks became a viral sensation, long before we used the phrase, “gone viral” in everyday speech.

That winter, Violet, who had a leg injury died after surgery.  Bobby would go on to have two other mates.  The nest continued to be successful, although the number of eyasses varied year to year.

Bobby brought great joy to many people.   He will be missed.

I visited the nest on Saturday.  When I arrived the adult female was feeding the three eyasses. After she was done, she went to the rooftop of Pless and then the flagpole of the Education Building. There she got bombarded by a pair of Blue Jays.

It will be interesting to see how things turn out.  The female seems to be able to feed herself and the three eyasses.  They will need more food as they grow older. so hunting will get harder.  Females usually leave the care and feeding of the fledglings to the males.  So, she will need to do this as well.  Let’s hope she can be a good single mother. The good news is that there are many examples of single mothers being able to see things through, so we will just have to watch and see what happens.

Some hawks quickly find another mate in situations like this.  Hawk watcher have seen suitors testing the waters.  But at this point the female doesn’t seem interested.