Northwest Central Park Hawks, St. John/Columbia Red-tailed Hawks, TCC/MCNY Red-tailed Hawks

St. John, then Wild West

My afternoon of bird watching started at The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. Over the last few days, many birders have watched a pair of Common Ravens (not so common for Manhattan) work on a nest on the shoulders of St. Andrew. (This is the site of a long time Red-tailed Hawk nest that was abandoned when construction of a building started nearby. The pair moved to another spot on the Cathedral and eventually moved to the Columbia University campus.)

So, when I looked a the nest, I was very, very surprised to see a young Red-tailed Hawk sitting in the nest. It will be interesting if the ravens reclaim it, or if they will move. (Update: Birders report the ravens have reclaimed the nest.)

Afterwards, I went down to 102nd and Fifth Avenue to look for the pair that had been there all winter. I could not find them. Others have also lost track of them. They may have a new nest location but I couldn’t find it. This is a real mystery, as they had been seen copulating often on a building at 104th and Fifth Avenue.

Lastly, I went to see the Wild West Playground hawks. They had an exchange (switching brooding duty) before I had my camera out, so I only go pictures of one of them hunkered down on the nest.

Northwest Central Park Hawks

Wild West, Again

I’ve been having some bad luck visiting the Red-tailed Hawk nest. It either rains or there are high winds. Today it was both. But I got to see the male bring a pigeon to the nest, and the pair do an exchange (swapping brooding duties) later in the afternoon. After last year, with no nesting Red-tailed Hawks in Central Park, even with the problems photographing this pair, I’m happy the park is back to normal.

Northwest Central Park Hawks

Another Visit To The Wild West Playground

I spent about an hour at the Wild West Playground nest late in the morning on Wednesday. The male was sitting on the nest when I arrived. I wasn’t sure it was the male, but when the female returned to tree about 100 yards north of the nest he flew over and they copulated. Than made it easy to tell who was who. After a few minutes the female flew to the nest.

When hawks start to nest it can be hard to know if they’ve laid eggs yet. A female can start sitting on the nest a few days before she starts laying eggs and the eggs are laid a few days apart. Figuring out the start date is hard. And early March seems a bit earlier than normal.

I would love to see the female roll her eggs to get a better sense of how far things are along. But this is part of the fun of watching a nest, you just have to make observations and do your best to make the right guess.

Northwest Central Park Hawks

Wild West Playground

In the northwest corner of the Wild West Playground around 93rd and Central Park West is a new Red-tailed Hawk Nest, with a brooding female. I went out in the rain, expecting there to be a break, but it was misty or raining the entire time I was there! The male joined the female briefly near the nest, and she came off the nest. They copulated, and then she returned to the nest.

This location has always had bad luck with eyasses and adults dying, mostly from frounce. I hope this pair will do better than past years.

86th and WEA Peregrine Falcons, 927 5th Avenue Red-tailed Hawks, Eagles, Falcons, Hawks and Osprey, Northwest Central Park Hawks, San Remo/Pinetum/AMNH Red-tailed Hawks, TCC/MCNY Red-tailed Hawks

Spring Is Coming

Some updates:

  • The Peregrine Falcons at 86th and West End look to be doing fine. The male hunted for the female this afternoon, and they made an exchange of food above the Broad Nosh Bagel shop on Broadway. She ate the prey on the church tower ledge. I read her band number and it is 77/BV, so she’s the same female as previously. She is from Du Bois Library, at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she hatched and was banded in 2019.
  • The El Dorado Peregrine Falcon pair have been seen often. Where they have a scrape is unknown. Keep an eye and ear out for where it might be.
  • The Peregrine Falcons at Riverside Church are back after a year off for construction.
  • The Red-tailed Hawk pair, with a new nest in the Wild West Playground in Central Park at 93rd, just off Central Park West, has the female sitting on the nest. Female hawks sometimes sit on their nests a few days before they lay eggs, so we’ll have to watch some more to figure out what’s going on. Anyone with an apartment higher than the nest may have a great view.
  • The San Remo pair are back to building a nest high up on the towers again. And a raccoon is still using their old nest to sleep in.
  • Octavia has been seen often along Fifth Avenue around 77th Street in the afternoon, on window she and Pale Male used to share.
Eurasian Eagle-Owl, General News, Owls

Science Denial Killed Flaco

Flaco’s death wasn’t a window collision or some other cause. It was science denial.

To borrow the title from Davis Guggenheim’s film of Al Gore discussing climate change, Flaco’s story has an inconvenient truth. A Eurasian Eagle-Owl raised by humans and not native to North America, released into Manhattan would have a lifespan outside the zoo of less than eighteen months.

Flaco’s life outside of the zoo, was not a wonderful life where he was a free and wild bird. He was a feral bird in an urban purgatory where he would be alone forever. New Yorkers choose to ignore the risks Flaco would face in Manhattan, and the risk he might become to native wildlife.

It was much more fun to enjoy wonderful images of him, keep track of his location, read cute stories of him being a “Peeping Tom”, catch a glimpse of him, listen to him hooting or fantasize that he was living his “best life” flying free, than to work to recover him.

We selfishly ignored the truth and simply let him die. We did not love him.

We were intrigued and infatuated with him, but we failed to protect him. Even birders who knew the city was an unsafe place for Flaco, let their bias against captivity prevent them from speaking out. When the zoo announced after only two weeks that it was giving up on capturing Flaco, there should have been protests not celebration.

It was never a simple story of “zoo bad, freedom good”. Flaco could easily have been recaptured in the first few months, if the zoo had worked to control the narrative and had immediately hired the correct people. Once recovered, public pressure would have then forced the zoo to build Flaco a better enclosure or he could have been placed with an owl sanctuary. It was never a binary choice of a small cage or Manhattan.

The inconvenient truth got in the way of gaining social media followers, taking a photograph, publishing “feel good” news stories, filming a documentary, selling merchandise, painting murals, and protecting a zoo’s reputation.

A radical animal activist released him without considering the risks. It was the act of an anarchist, who was willing to cut short an owl’s life to prove a point. No large owl has lived in Manhattan for more than 18 months in the last few decades. Flaco wasn’t being released to some alpine forest. Flaco was simply being used as a pawn in a battle over zoos.

This radical animal activist was celebrated as a hero by many. Would we celebrate someone letting a parrot out of its cage, or dumping a house cat in Central Park? No. So, why did we celebrate Flaco’s release? And why did we applaud an anarchist?

Flaco’s fate was sealed during the first two weeks of his life outside the zoo. A perfect storm of a social media influencer who loved to be in front of television cameras while pretending to be an expert, the media looking for that happy and positive special interest story and a zoo administration without a leader with a P.R. policy of non-engagement, turned the public from understanding that Flaco need to be captured to wanting him to stay free.

After Flaco’s release from the zoo, any media publicity, especially publicity that would invite the public to watch any rescue efforts would hamper his capture.

However, this occurred due to a campaign by David Barrett via his X account, the Manhattan Bird Alert, to cast Flaco’s release not as a misguided criminal act, but as a chance for an invasive species to live happily in New York City. David Barrett, as he did with a Mandarin Duck, Snowy Owl and a Barred Owl, has a habit of turning birds into celebrities, not for the benefit of the bird, but to promote his social media account and to get himself in the print and television media.

The media got duped by David Barrett and others with Flaco. Major media outlets, including The New York Time and the Wall Street Journal assigned metro desk reporters, not reporters who normally covered science and nature topics to cover Flaco. Reporters treated the story as an urban phenomenon, rather than focusing on what was the right action to protect Flaco and the native species he would interact with.

How different would the reporting have been in The New York Times if the story had gotten covered by someone on the Science Times staff? We would have had real experts telling the truth about Flaco’s future outside of the zoo rather than a social media influencer shaping a self-serving narrative. It wouldn’t have been an upbeat story, but it would have put pressure on the zoo to recover Flaco.

The zoo, which only had an acting President after Cristián Samper’s departure, chose not to have a spokesperson present the zoo’s position and gain public support. Their employees are all under NDAs and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has a “don’t engage” policy regarding animal activists. Their only public comments before his death were three press releases and I believe one tweet from Robert G. “Robb” Menzi, then acting President of WCS. They quickly lost control of public opinion and doomed Flaco to an early death.

The crowds David Barrett sent to the first few rescues made it impossible to catch Flaco. Especially on the first real attempt to catch him on the Hechsher Ballfields. He would have been caught if it wasn’t for the public that was invited by David Barrett to come watch Flaco. Just before dusk with only five people watching Flaco’s roost, David Barrett sent a tweet with Flaco’s location and thirty people arrived within minutes and David Barrett continued to broadcast Flaco’s minute-by-minute location throughout the evening. If David Barrett was an ethical person, he would have asked people to avoid the ballfields to allow the WCS team to work. Instead, with crowds of people, Flaco only made one real attempt to come down to the traps, and by some bad luck managed to free himself from the trap. Later that night, he was seen catching his first rat making the future rescue efforts harder.

The next week at the last rescue attempt, a rehabber and the zoo staff were very, very close to capturing Flaco. The WCS had finally gotten an expert rehabber, who knew how to use audio recordings in addition to traps to capture Flaco. However, David Barrett baited a “Free Flaco” follower into harassing the rescue efforts and they had to be halted. This rehabber even got death threats!

So, the acting president of the zoo, Robert G. “Robb” Menzi, choose to halt all rescue efforts after only two weeks, against the advice of the Central Park Zoo staff. Clearly, public relations took precedence over science.

The public and the media believes that the zoo just gave up, because after beginning to hunt on his own, Flaco was too hard to catch. This is simply not true. He could have been caught up until he left Central Park.

I talked to the rehabber working to return Flaco to safety early that last evening. I asked him, “Whose side are you on, those who want Flaco to be free or the zoo?” His answer was perfect. He looked at me and said, “I’m on Flaco’s side.”

It’s too bad more of us hadn’t been on Flaco’s side.