General News

UWS American Barn Owls, Tuesday 11/13

I’ve studied many urban nests, starting with Pale Male’s nest on 927 Fifth Avenue. Over the years, I’ve followed many of the Red-tailed Hawk nests in the city, a few Eastern Screech Owl and Great Horned Owl nests, and a few Peregrine Falcon nests.

They are fascinating to watch, and I’ve learned a lot about each species. How often can you take the subway to a nest? I’m looking forward to learning more about these American Barn Owls.

On Tuesday night, I saw two of the fledglings lock talons while perched and preen each other. I never expected to see that in Manhattan.


The parents are feeding the fledgling, mostly on the water tank. The fledglings tend to wonder at this early stage, and having a central feeding location helps corral them. I’m looking forward to seeing how far the fledglings explore their urban environment and then explore Central Park.


American Barn Owls, unlike the other owls we see in New York City, wait until it is pitch black to appear. This is unlike the Barred Owls or Great Horned Owls, we infrequently see in Central Park. So watching them is a completely different experience. You can’t come at dusk with binoculars and expect to see much, especially on a clear night. Even most cameras, especially hand-held cameras will fail to take a decent image.

There are also limited windows to watch the water tank. It is in the center of the block and there are only limited windows to view the tank from Central Park West or West 75th Street. These get packed with onlookers at dusk, but being in the scrum won’t help you see the owls once it gets dark.

It’s also getting harder to see the owls now that they have fledged. They are often not in view now as they explore the buildings around the tank.

So, if the news reports have you clamoring to see these owls, just know it will take some effort to see them.

Owls

Upper West Side American Barn Owls

Over the last 18 months, those of us follow coyotes, have been seeing American Barn Owls in Central Park. The sightings are rare, and usually the owls are hunting like Northern Harriers, gliding low around the park. We would see them for only a few seconds, like white ghosts.

During the winter, and especially last December we occationally saw them perched. A few times we saw two together, and photographs implied three different colorations, light toast, medium toast, and dark toast, so might have seen as many as three birds. During the cold snap, one owl was found dead behind the Band Shell.

One of the owls did not like hearing the coyotes howl (who respond to sirens) and on a few occasions would fly to the coyotes, perch over them and cry out.

Except for one day, when an owl was perched in the Pinetum, the roosting location of these owls was a mystery.

So, we knew they were residents of Manhattan, but given their large home territories, we had no idea where they were roosting.



A few weeks ago, I started to hear reports of people seeing and hearing a Barn Owl around a block on the Upper West Side. Then about a week ago, pictures started appearing on social media. I went a few times and didn’t have any luck finding them.

On Wednesday, 10/7, I found three owls on a water tank on the Upper West Side. Others soon found them and the news and the nest location became public. There are two adults and at least five owlets, possibly six. While Barn Owls certainly nested in Manhattan centuries ago, this may be the first record of a nest in Manhattan in the last century.



On the second night of watching the American Barn nest, six owls were visible, and a rat got delivered by a parent and consumed on the roof of the water tank by one of the owlets. (It was hard to tell if the six owls were all youngsters or their was an adult with them.)

It became clear that some of the owlets had already fledged, and a few younger owlets were still a bit shy and reluctant to go on the roof. The eggs are not laid all at once, so they hatch on different days, yielding younger and older owlets.

I’m not surprised that the nest location wasn’t found until these birds started to fledge. While residents of the block heard and saw the adults for a few weeks, until the owlets started to leave the nest finding this nest in the dark would have been very difficult.



On Friday night four owlets explored the roof of the water tank, and one seemed to stay inside. I was able to capture two feedings by the parents.

Even with excellent camera equipment, I’m unable to capture enough detail to tell the parents and the owlets apart.



Only three owls were on the water tank on Saturday, so some of the fledglings must have dispersed, most likely to the roofs and windows on the block, hidden from view from the street. A fourth owlet was on a platform below the nest.



On Sunday there was a brief break in the rain and I was able to watch a food delivery. When the parent delivers the rat, it does a talon-to-beak transfer. As was the case on Saturday, three owlets remain on the tower. When I was leaving, I was able to find one fledgling on a platform below the water tank.



On Columbus day, it appeared that all of the juveniles have fledged from the nest, although some are still roosting in the nest cavity. The roof of the water tank is still being used for food drop offs by the parents. It was a busy night with fledglings flying to and from the tank.



This nest’s location was publicized by a local paper and has attracted a great deal of interest among the birding community and the public at large. While it would have been nice to have had its location and details kept quiet, which is standard practice for owl nests, this didn’t happen.

This nest is an incredibly rare event and was bound to become a news story. We can spend hours being upset that established ethical protocols weren’t followed or we can move forward and educate ourselves and the public.

We can support organizations like the Wild Bird Fund, where statistically at least one of these birds will end up needing care as well as the NYC Bird Alliance who can work to ensure that if the nest site needs to be repaired, nest boxes are set up in the area. And we can talk to passionate but inexperienced owl watchers, in person and online, about how to respect these owls once they begin to leave the nest.

We also need to improve sanitation on the Upper West Side. Politicians are fighting the sanitation department over the deployment of Empire Bins, because they will eliminate parking spaces, rather than supporting them because they will reduce the rodent population. Rodenticides are often used as an afterthought to cover up the mismanagement of trash and end up killing hawks and owls in addition to rodents. 

So, as you watch these videos, enjoy them. Watching these owls is amazing. But I hope you also think about whether the rat is poisoned. Or if the owl will be harassed by onlookers once it leaves the nest. Or if it miscalculates when fledging, will there be someone to take care of it.

Let’s work to make sure this late summer/early fall clutch of American Barn Owl owlets, isn’t just a one-time event.

General News

Wild Inside

I’ve been mostly posting on Instagram this summer, and neglected this blog recently. But I do want to quickly write a bit about Wild Inside, Penny Lane’s wonderful film about Flaco.

Those who read my blog during the time he was free know, I didn’t agree with how he was being treated once he was released and knew he wouldn’t survive in the city. It was not a popular standpoint.

I was initially worried that Wild Inside would be just another fluff piece about Flaco. But is an honest portrayal of his life, and while highly entertaining, also documents the issues Flaco faced while in the zoo and in Manhattan.

I’m pleased by how Penny Lane used the nine minutes of footage I provided for the film and the interview I gave her. My opinions were well respected and the footage was used accurately.

Flaco’s life is a complex story, and it gets the rich treatment it deserves in the film. It is still showing in many art houses across the country. Please go see it. You’ll enjoy it!

927 5th Avenue Red-tailed Hawks

Sick Eyass at Fifth Avenue

The Fifth Avenue eyass fell out of the nest on Tuesday, June 30th around 5:10 pm.

Over the last few days, the 927 Fifth Avenue eyass has been lethargic. It spent hours just standing and recently the father was feeding it, something that is unusual with a fully grown nestling. It had also been on the nest much longer than expected, about 50 days.

On Tuesday when I visited the nest it was clear it was sick. It could not stand up, and then got caught in the side of the nest. In trying to right itself, it fell out of the nest and fell to the ground.

Richard Nelson and I looked inside the park and then both went outside to Fifth Avenue. Someone had put it in a box, and we transported the bird to the Wild Bird Fund.

This year we’ve been having a tough time with the Central Park nests. Two adults died, the male at 93rd and Central Park West and the male at the New York Athletic Club. Two nestlings died on their nests, one at 93rd and Central Park West and one at the New York Athletic Club.

The replacement male at 93rd and Central Park West is confused about the surviving fledgling. He thinks it is a competitor and has been attacking it. The mother is sneaking the fledgling food, but it is not having a normal childhood.

And now this.

Update: The 927 eyass died later that evening in the care of the Wild Bird Fund. Rita McMahon reported, “The bird died overnight. He was severely weak and lethargic, emaciated, severe dehydration, both legs had partial paralysis.” The cause of death wasn’t reported and test results often take weeks to come back.

927 5th Avenue Red-tailed Hawks

Watching the 927 Fifth Avenue Red-tailed Hawk Nest

The last successful nest at 927 Fifth Avenue was in 2018, when Pale Male and Octavia had two eyasses (hawk chicks). Octavia laid eggs the next year and brooded but the eggs didn’t hatch. There was another failed nest in 2010.

Since it’s been awhile and I suspect there will be many new hawk watchers, young and old, I thought it would be a good time to go through how to watch this nest and how things progress throughout the spring and summer.

I made some slides about Pale Male in 2019 and what to expect to see over a year while watching him. Pale Male is no longer with us, but the slides give you a sense of what to expect this year. This video from 2017 shows the stages of development of eyasses on a nest.

On May 8th, the first feeding was spotted by birders and on May 16 a birder first saw what seems to be this year’s only eyass pop up its head for the first time. Generally, the eyasses fledge (leave the nest) somewhere between 42-46 days after they hatch. Roughly, that puts the fledge date somewhere between June 19th and June 23rd, although we’ve seen eyasses wait longer, sometimes up to 50 days to leave. Young hawks have individual personalities and we see some precocious eyasses fledge early (sometimes too early), and some who just want to stay on the nest and get fed by their parents.

Eyasses grow to full size before they fledge, so we’re going to see this year’s hatchling quickly grow up. That’s good, because it’s really hard to see this year’s eyass now. Generally, it’s been hugging the wall of the building. If you view the cradle and think of it as a clock, it’s generally around 11 o’clock. The best view of it is from a twenty feet north of the canopy of 944 Fifth Avenue, a few blocks north of nest building. But this is far enough away that a spotting scope is really necessary to get a good view.

It will become much easier to watch them with binoculars by the end of May. Soon the eyass will be getting much bigger, but still generally white, and then go through an awkward stage as downy feathers are replace by its flight feathers.

I encourage anyone who hasn’t watched a Red-tailed Hawk nest to do so this year.  It’s incredibly enjoyable.  The “hawk bench”, where the best viewing is from, is just next to the Hans Christian Andersen statue on the west side of the Model Boat Pond.

927 5th Avenue Red-tailed Hawks

927 Fifth Avenue Baby Pictures

I had known based on behavior that the 927 Fifth Avenue nest had hatched, had seen brief look at what I thought was an eyass (hawk chick) through spikes and twigs, but today I got great looks at an eyass on the nest. Chances are it’s an only child but we’ll know for sure within the week. The temperatures were warm today, and the video suffers from the thermal distortions of the heat. But I’m happy to share the images, since it is the first time I’m seeing an eyass on this nest since 2018!