Two updates:

• The hawks who are now nesting on the West Drive appear to have started brooding their second clutch.
• The Terence Cardinal Cooke nest has hatched and feeding have begun.

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.

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.

Some new reports of activity and brooding, but the biggest discovery was that the 350 Central Park West pair has moved the nest to 1115 Fifth Avenue, just south of 93rd Street.

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.

After being able to travel only by foot for most of last year, I look forward to this year’s Red-tailed Hawk nesting season in Manhattan. I’ve seen activity first hand or have gotten reports from fellow hawks watchers. Reports are always appreciated.

Some of the recent news is:

• There is a new nest on the Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center. Hawks have tried this location before only to have the nest blow off the ledge. This one seems well-built and has a brooding pair, that most likely started sitting on the nest in early March. If they are successful, this may be the first nest to hatch in Manhattan. The nest is on a ledge near the top of the southwestern end of the side of the building facing Fifth Avenue.
• The pair in Fort Washington was seen getting ready for nesting in late February.
• St. John the Divine has also seen lots of activity, as has 927 Fifth Avenue (Pale Male/Octavia), Washington Square Park, Tompkins Square Park (Laura Goggin wrote a nice piece about the TSP nest history), and Governors Island.
• 350 Central Park West is still active. Although the air conditioner was removed and a new one was placed in the window to the right of the nest, the building left the shell of the old AC unit in place and left the nest undisturbed. Kudos to the building managers 350 CPW!
• In 2019, with only a week to go before the eyasses would have fledged, the building had the hawks removed from the 1802 Third Avenue nest. I don’t know what happened in 2020, but the adults are still in the neighborhood.