The eyasses at Washington Square Park still have a lot of growing to do, but they’re sure looking older. Their orange bibs are coming in and they’re getting closer to their mother’s height. They’ve even started to pick at food a little bit.
The eyasses have grown up enough that if one is patient and waits for a feeding one can now get a very good view of them from the street. I had a great time on Sunday watching the hawks. Across the street from where I was watching was an afternoon first communion service at the local Roman Catholic parish. Many of the church goers stopped by and watched the hawks. I sometime get burnt out by lots of hawks questions, but this was fun group who really wanted to know about the hawks.
The Sheep Meadow hawks are having to put up with a great deal of commotion this weekend. Not only was the meadow full of people, the stage and launch area for the AIDS Walk NYC was 100 feet from them.
These hawks, who built there nest in the winter when the Sheep Meadow was locked for the season, must have had a great surprise when they discovered this spring they had chosen one of the busiest areas in the park for their nest site.
Luckily, the eyasses will be safe in their tree, even if there is a lot of noise. Plus when they fledge, they will always be able to play on the lawn on the Mall next door, which is permanently closed since it contain one of the last large urban stands of American Elms in the northeast of the US.
The eyasses at Fifth Avenue are now big enough that at least one of them is visible when you go to see them. This makes it really enjoyable to visit them. They’re flapping and moving around the nest often.
Although it started to rain while I was in the Meadow, I got some great views of the two eyasses. In addition to a feeding, I got to see the mother attend to a number of pin feathers on one of the eyasses.
Unfortunately, the day was interrupted by a Conservancy employee who was insistent that my tripod was in some way damaging the Sheep Meadow lawn. A quick phone call to the park’s Directory of Community Relations (CGreenleaf@centralparknyc.org) resolved the matter.
Unfortunately other photographers weren’t so lucky earlier in the week. They had been forced to stop photographing the hawks by other Conservancy employees.
The behavior of these employees proved to me that there is a systemic bias against photographers in the Central Park Conservancy that flows from senior management down to the most junior employees.
When this ends up in court, which at this point I’m almost certain it will, it’s going to be fun watching the Conservancy try and prove that a camera tripod with a DSLR and attached telephoto lens could do any damage to the Sheep Meadow lawn. If the lawn is that fragile, no one should be allowed to picnic on it!
I got to catch a feeding in Sheep Meadow on a very gray evening in Central Park. The two eyasses are just wonderful to watch.
