Urban Hawks

March 4, 2006December 16, 2020Owls

Introduction

Over the last year, I’ve photographed a pair of Eastern Screech-Owls (Otus asio) living in a tree cavity along the West Drive of Central Park. The owls only use this cavity between November and April each year, returning to tree branches in the warmer months.

Eastern Screech-Owls were re-introduced to Central Park after an absence of about thirty-five years as part of a controversial biodiversity project called Project X. For the most part, this program was a failure, and has been deemed by some to be more about politics than science.

I first photographed the owls when I started birding in Central Park in the Spring of 2005.

This blog follows the owls in detail from mid-February through early April of 2006. Concerned that publicity could be harmful to these birds, I choose to delay making these blog entries public until after the birds left the cavity.

The story has an unhappy ending, revealing one of the realities of nature, birds have an incredibly high mortality rate. For Eastern Screech-Owls in a wild environment, this is a 70% mortality rate in the first year of life and a 30% mortality rate thereafter. (If you’re looking for a happy story, you may not want to read further.)

These photographs were all taken with natural light. Advances in digital photography make it possible to take pictures in very low light. The photographs were taken with either a 400mm or 500mm lens at distances of 50-200 feet.

As the nights darkened, natural light sometimes was replaced by orange street lamps. You’ll notice some color shifts in the photographs. To have avoided this completely, I would have needed to use flash. I decided that I would rather have the color shifts than risk disturbing the owls with repeated flashes.

February 26, 2006December 16, 2020927 5th Avenue Red-tailed Hawks

5th Avenue Hawks

I was walking near Cedar Hill, when I saw a Red-tailed hawk fly north at an incredible pace, and then make a perfect right angle to turn and proceed towards the back of the Met. I walked north, and found both Pale Male and Lola. I heard a wonderful sound from them. The circled quite low in the area between the Obelisk and the museum. (It was quite windy and I wonder if this was a protected area.)

Within minutes I lost them, and headed south towards the model boat pond. I ran into Lincoln Karim who reported that the pair had copulated three times earlier in the day.

Here are some pictures from the Northwestern shore of the model boat pond around 4:30.

February 20, 2006December 20, 2020Southern Central Park Red-tailed Hawks

Nest Building On C.P.S.

After arriving at Central Park South around 2:15 p.m. on President’s Day, it took me awhile to find our two Trump Parc Red-tailed Hawks. I finally found them both on the northeast corner of the Trump International Hotel and Towers, at 61st and Central Park West.

Charlotte is on the left, Junior on the right.

Charlotte, the female moves twenty feet south on the Trump International.

Charlotte then moves to the eastern Hampshire House chimney.

Junior reappears and dives down near the restrooms at 61st and Central Park West. I rush over from 7th Avenue to find him, but when I got over to Central Park West, he was already soaring and gaining altitude. I though he had been hunting, but discover that instead he has torn off a tree branch.

The couple is then reunited on the Hampshire House chimney.

February 20, 2006December 20, 2020927 5th Avenue Red-tailed Hawks

Pale Male Brings Lola Take-Out

While birding at the Oven (a section of the Ramble on the shore of the Lake), I was enjoying the variety of birds which included, Canada Geese, Mallards, a Mourning Dove, a Red-bellied Woodpecker, two Downy Woodpeckers, Blue Jays, Black-capped Chickadees, Tufted Titmice, a Fox Sparrow, four Northern Cardinals, two male Red-winged Blackbirds, a Rusty Blackbird, a Common Grackle, a House Finch, and lots of House Sparrows.

Around 4:30 p.m. we spotted Pale Male with a rat circling over the Oven. He then headed towards 5th Avenue.

It was very cold. A group of us thought heading to see where Pale Male went with the rat would warm us up. So, it was off to “The Bench” by the model boat pond.

When we arrived we found both Lola (lower left) and Pale Male (upper right) on a 5th Avenue building around 77th Street.

Lola on the same building eating the “Take-Out”, Pale Male has brought her.

Pale Male makes a brief trip to the nest.

Pale Male back on the 77th Street building.

Lola hops up on a railing and soon exits heading due West.

February 20, 2006December 16, 2020Other Red-tailed Hawks

East Harlem Red-Tailed Hawks

While birding on the shore of the Harlem Meer in Central Park, I saw a pair of Red-Tailed Hawks flying over East Harlem on Sunday afternoon. They flew progressively higher until I lost sight of them. They appeared to be flying over the housing developments that are bounded by Lenox Avenue, 1st Avenue, 112th and 115th Streets.

When I got home, I looked up the area on Google Earth and found that this is a strip of green that runs to the East River with Wards Island/Randalls Island across the river. What a great territory that would make for a Red-tailed Hawk pair. Especially if it also included Marcus Garvey Memorial Park and the area around the 125th Street Metro North Station.

Or is this just the eastern territory of a Morningside Park Red-tailed Hawk pair? Or the northern territory of a Central Park North Meadow pair?

Harlem’s Red-tailed population confuses the heck out of me!