I arrived at the Fifth Avenue nest to the sounds of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Pale Male was just leaving the nest. At first I thought it was empty but then I saw Octavia’s tail in the wind. It looks like she’s either getting ready to or has already laid an egg. Pale Male made another visit to the nest before perching on the Carlyle Hotel.
The 350 Central Park West hawks must have been busy over the last 24 hours, because the nest look to have a lot more twigs. This afternoon one of the hawks continued to work on the nest, while the other made a few fly overs. Keep your fingers crossed for this pair!
On the tenth floor of 350 Central Park West, five windows south of 95th Street on a air conditioner facing the park, a pair of Red-tailed Hawks is building a nest. I got to enjoy watching both of them bring twigs to the nest. Let’s hope they succeed!
The nest is below the treeline, so the best vantages are from the park side of Central Park West, either at 92nd or 96th.
Christo was the star of my day. I first saw him copulating twice with Nora on 90 Baruch Drive and then later in the day in Tompkins Square Park. It’s going to be an interesting spring! (But we should all be prepared for things to go wrong. This is a very unusual situation!)
The story of Dora’s return is getting more interesting.
Due to a WPIX newscast about an apartment needing repair, we’ve learned of the location of what seems to be Christo and Nora’s (Dora’s replacement while she was in rehab) nest. It is on an air conditioner on the west façade of 90 Baruch Drive (which is also marked 80 Baruch Drive for reasons only known to the NYC Housing Authority) on the tenth floor. The nest only seems to have just been started and seems to need more work. The new nest is about ten blocks southeast of Tompkins Square Park.
We saw Nora eat lunch on a building just opposite the nest in the early afternoon and had glimpses of another hawk, presumably Christo. Hawk watchers reported seeing them copulate on Friday.
Mid-afternoon a group of us shifted our hawk watching to Tompkins Square Park, where we found Christo and Dora in the same tree. Dora made a loop of the park, and joined a Cooper’s Hawk in a tree for a few minutes. Reports came in after I left the park, that Christo and Dora copulated.
I think we’ll need some good photographs to know for sure that Christo is trying to support both females, but it sure looks like it.
Just before I arrived in Tompkins Square Park, Christo had caught a pigeon in the park. Hawk watchers had expected him to give it to Dora but he left the park with it. Where he went and where Nora is has been a mystery the last few days.
Then Dora flew to the top of the Christodora building, flew along Avenue B, and ended up hunting and eating on the school ruins east of the Christodora. After a rooftop visit at 10th Street, she looked like she was going to roost below 7th. And just before dusk Christo made a visit to the nest.
It’s so great to see Dora doing so well.
