Hawk watchers in the late afternoon and early evening in Central Park were able to see rats being consumed by both Fifth Avenue fledglings, the offspring of Pale Male and Lima.  The meals were eaten in trees, although one fledgling finished eating on the ground after dropping dinner.

The video from today is twenty minutes long and contains a great deal of footage of the meals being eaten.  Watch it only if you don’t mind seeing rodents being torn up and eaten. 

I’m facintated by the way rodents being eaten by hawks, since there seems to be an order in which Red-tailed Hawks eat their prey.  They consume the organs first, then the rest of the animal including the bones, and generally eat the tail last.  It seems they eat the most nutritious parts first, and that they need to eat the bones to get enough calcium.