Urban Hawks

Our Central Park South fledgling is a good flyer for being so young.  She has managed to make it to the southern edge of the Sheep Meadow, and to each corner of the Heckscher Ballfields.

Wednesday started out as a foggy, rainy morning in the southern portion of Central Park with a fledgling who spent the night alone, and ended as a sunny evening, with a family reunited. 

My earlier posts detail the morning and the reunion. It had been found by its parents earlier in the afternoon and noisy reunion was followed by a feeding.

I got back into the park around 6 p.m.  The fledgling was in a small tree behind a baseball diamond.  The fledgling was hopping from branch to branch learning how to maneuver around a tree. 

I had to leave the park to join some friends for dinner, but left with a warm feeling, that a hawk family was back to normal in the park I love, Central Park.

Thank you to Bobby Horvath and all of the Urban Park Rangers who made this possible.

Charlotte (the mother) and the fledgling of the Central Park South/888 Seventh Avenue pair reunited around 3:30 on
Wednesday afternoon.  It was noisy affair with lots of calling by both
of them.  They were seen flying off together.

Later, the parents caught a squirrel for the youngster around 4:45.

There are still some concerns that everything will go back to
normal, and the fledgling needs to become people shy after all of the
handling, but everything so far has been positive.

The 888 Seventh Avenue fledgling has been returned to the park. It was placed in a quiet fenced-in area.  It is two blocks into the park and about five blocks from the nest.  The parents haven’t found the fledgling yet and still seem to be searching in the blocks around the nest.  Hopefully, the young fledgling will get hungry soon and start to beg for food so the parents can find it.

(For those who aren’t New Yorkers, the nest site is in a horrible location. It’s far from the park, has a narrow ledge and is very high.  When fledglings are returned to their parents, one would usually put the fledgling as close as possible to the nest.  In this case however, 57th and Seventh Avenue is too dangerous an area, and returning the bird to the actual nest would require a window washing rig.  It could also result in second poor fledge attempt.  So, we have this less than ideal situation. Nature can be a harsh mistress.)

I arrived at the nest a little after sunrise to find the fledgling in the tree it has roosted in last night.

The park’s department has assigned an Urban Park Ranger to keep an eye on the fledgling for a few days.  The ranger is Rob Mastrianni.  He was responsible for the rescue of the Inwood Hill Park female, who had two wonderful eyasses this spring.  He’s a great choice for the job.

Now, just hope and pray that nature will get these parents and their fledgling back on course.