2021 Manhattan Red-tailed Hawk Nest Update 7

Some updates:

  • Pam Langford reports that feedings have been seen at the Fort Washington nest.
  • Tahj Holiday reports that the nest at 136th and Broadway has three eggs with a least two having hatched.
  • Robert Schmunk reports brooding has finally begun at the St. John the Divine.
  • One eyass is being seen at Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center.
  • Patrick Delaney has reported that after laying three eggs before a proper nest could be finished on the St. Regis, that the nest appears to have failed.
  • NYU staff have confirmed that there are three eggs in the Bobst nest.
  • The Tompkins Square Park nest has hatched.

2021 Manhattan Red-tailed Hawk Nest Update 5

Thanks to Tahj Holiday, we now have the location of the nest that had been at 1516 Amsterdam Avenue. It is now at 3361 Broadway at 136th Street.

Brooding has been confirmed at 310 West 72nd Street and on Governors Island.

The Grand Army Plaza hawks attempted to nest at the St. Regis, but they ended up laying an egg on a terrace below a half-finished nest two floors above.

Two long standing nests are in doubt this year. Pale Male and Octavia aren’t nesting this year, and although two hawks are being seen at St. John the Divine, they don’t appear to be nesting yet.

2021 Manhattan Red-tailed Hawk Nest Update 4

The main news of the week has been a report from Ginny de Liagre of a nest being rapidly built just west of the West Drive’s W0302 streetlight. The pair originally from 350 Central Park West, that moved to 1115 Fifth Avenue this year, abandoned the Fifth Avenue location due to construction on the building last week.

Our hope is that this new nest belongs to this pair and they will attempt a second clutch soon. This paper, The Laying of Replacement Clutches by Falconifoema and Strigiforms In North America by Michael L. Morrison and Brian James Walton says to expect a recycling time between 12-25 days, with 17 days being the average for Red-tailed Hawks. So, if a second clutch happens it will most likely be the 3rd or 4th week of April.

(For those not in the know, all of Central Park’s streetlights have a number. The format is DNNXX, where D is the Drive name in this case West Drive, NN is the cross street with the 1 omitted for streets above 99 making 03 be 103rd Street, and XX is the number of the light, so in this case 2 means the second light. Before cell phones with GPS, this is how we know where we were if we got lost in the park.)

Two other pieces of news also came in this week. Richard Schmunk let me know the nest at 135th and Amsterdam had been removed from the fire escape with some unconfirmed reports that it might have been rebuild near Broadway. Via Facebook, I’ve received news from Patrick Delaney that hawks are being seen around the hotels at 55th and Fifth Avenue, both on the St. Regis and a few twigs were brought to The Peninsula.

2021 Manhattan Red-tailed Hawk Nest Update 2

Updates:

  • Brooding has begun on both the Inwood Hill Park and Tompkins Square Park nests.
  • A new nest was found at 1115 Fifth Avenue at 93rd Street by Stella Hamilton. The building is undergoing façade repairs, so this nest may have problems. It helps explain why when the Thomas Cardinal Cooke (TCC) hawks were flying high above Fifth Avenue, we often saw two additional hawks flying with them.
  • Ben Cacace reported the early stages of nest building on a Con Ed smokestack at 75th and York Avenue.