I’ve been birding without a camera this week, but have been visiting the Wild West Playground nest at 93rd and Central Park West. For the most part, I’ve only seen a hawk brooding on the nest, barely visible. However, I have caught two exchanges on different days around 6 pm. If things go well, we might see signs of hatching by April 15th.
The postmortem lab results had come back for Flaco. You can read the details on the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) website. The testing revealed two underlying that contributed to his death, a herpesvirus most likely transmitted from his prey of Rock Pigeons, and exposure to four different rodenticides due to his consumption of Brown Rats.
His cause of death, which was initially linked to a collision or fall, was precipitated by these two underlying conditions. As, I said a few weeks ago, what really killed Flaco was science denial. While the vandal who released him is untimely responsible for Flaco’s death, there were many organizations that failed Flaco.
The zoo failed to protect and recover Flaco. The Wildlife Conservation Society (WSC) has never addressed the poor security at the Central Park Zoo, the public relations vacuum that led to the disruption of the rescue attempts, and the abandonment of the rescue attempts after only two weeks which the WCS justified because of Flaco’s ability to feed himself, ignoring the risks he faced in Manhattan and the risks he posed to native wildlife.
Social Media influencers, such as David Barrett, who actively interfered with the rescue efforts to recover Flaco also share responsibility for Flaco’s death. As does both the print and television media, who rather than calling for Flaco’s recapture, glorified his existence outside of the zoo as some wonderful expression of freedom and an immigrant story of someone arriving in the Big Apple and making a new life.
Octavia made a trip to the 927 Fifth Avenue nest late this afternoon. She brought a branch with her and did some arranging. Other bird watchers have seen her with another hawk on the nest. I suspect that she’s just going through the motions and won’t be nesting this year. I would love to be wrong, but I think she’s done with raising anymore hawks.
This year the Governors Island Red-tailed Hawks have nested on a fire escape above play:groundNYC’s The Yard, a children’s playground. The female was on the nest and the male kept watch from the flagpole of St. Cornelius Chapel.
I finally got a chance to go up to Columbia University to see what was happening with the Havemeyer Hall nest. When I arrived a hawk was sitting on the nest. After about fifteen minutes, a hawk with a brown tail arrived and landed in a tree near the nest. The hawks did an exchange, and the young hawk sat on the nest.
There were reports of an injured hawk being picked up from the campus a few weeks ago, and I suspect this young hawk took advantage of this opening to quickly mate with the established female.
Thanks to an email from Melody Andres, I learned of a Red-tailed Hawk nest at 102nd and Riverside Drive. The nest is over the sidewalk of the main two-way section of Riverside Drive, not the one way, eastern section that goes from 97th to 110th. It can be seen well from the lawn across the street from the nest.
The pair was very active while I was there perching on building up and down the drive, soaring high together, being harassed by two crows, and working on the nest.
After visiting Riverside, I went down to Washington Square Park. The nest on the Bobst Library looks refreshed. It is now even higher now and the brooding female and hopefully eyasses later this year, will be less visible from the street. I saw both hawks and one visited the nest.
The video and photos below are from Riverside Drive.
