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.
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.
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.
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.
