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.