The Washington Square Park fledglings have been spending time on top of buildings around Mercer Street the last few days. On Sunday afternoon both were on a building railing at Washington Street and Mercer Street (Psychology Building of NYU). Both fledglings looked to be in good shape.
The Tompkins Square Park nest still has three eyasses on the nest. They should be leaving the nest sometime this week. This is the first year for the nest, so it will be interesting to see where the parents encourage the youngsters to fledge towards, building roofs or trees of the park.
The second fledgling of the Washington Square Park nest was returned to the park yesterday afternoon after its adventure in a NYU classroom and rehab. I found it this evening on University Place.
It started out on the window ledges of 19 University Place, wrapping around the building from University Place to Eight Street. It then flew to eastern wing of The Brevoort. It tried to land on a ninth floor windows ledge, but misjuded the width of the ledge. It tried to readjust but floated down to a second floor terrace.
After about five minutes it jumped up to the railing of the terrace. Eventually, it flew back down University Place and landed on scaffolding in front of the Weinstein Residence Hall. After about ten minutes, it went into a Gingko tree, where I suspect it roosted for the night.
The last 5th Avenue fledgling finally got its act together and left the nest Tuesday morning. It appears to spent the day in a few trees near where it first landed. I continue to be amazed by differences in personalities in Red-tailed Hawk fledgings. They range from fearless and confident to shy and uncertain.
They remaining eyass on the Fifth Avenue still hasn’t fledged yet. Its siblings fledged last Wednesday. The longest I’ve seen between sibling fledges is seven days. We’ll see what happens!
On Sunday at Sheep Meadow, when I arrived it looked like one of the eyasses had fledged. After about twenty minutes, however it became apparent that there were still two eyasses in the tree, and one had learned to go out on the branches.
Branching is common in tree nests, but I’ve become so accustomed to building nests, I had forgotten to give the tree a good going over before assuming we had had a fledge! I think the eyasses hatched around May 1st, so we should have a fledge by the weekend.
