I finally got a chance to visit St. John the Divine on Sunday. The St. John the Divine Red-tailed Hawk pair go into stealth mode when they nest. The nest allows either parent to completely hide on the nest and the the parent who is off the nest usually stays hidden before the eggs hatch.
I spent an hour and half at the nest and only got to see the parents for about a half minute during an exchange.
I arrived late in the afternoon, and realize I’m going to have to arrive earlier in the day to see some hunting. The male spent most of his time perched on either a flag pole or on the cross.
There was a brief bit of activity while he escorted a hawk from the western side of the park to the east which included a few stops along the way.
While the nest is in a great location, the park really seems too small and too well used to raise fledglings in. It will be interesting to see what happens this summer.
(This is my 1,000 blog post. I never imagined making this many posts, when I started urbanhaws.com years ago.)
As the Dark Female begins to settle in, Pale Male has been introducing her to his full territory which includes the Beresford Apartments at 81st and Central Park West. Pale Male eat and gave leftover to his new mate on the south tower of the building on Saturday.
After years of juvenile hawks, and last year’s pair of unsuccessful nesters, this year Washington Square finally has an active nest with three eggs. The nest is on a window ledge of Dr. John Sexton’s office, President of the university, at N.Y.U.’s Bobst Library. This location continues the pattern of hawks in Manhattan finding spectacular places to build nests.
The library is on the south east corner of Washington Square on West 4th Street. The nest is on the side of the building that faces the park, on the top floor, the second window from the west.
The New York Times had a nice feature on the nest yesterday, and has set up a webcam to view the nest. The streaming feed is on Livestream.com, which also provides applications for the iPhone and iPad. If you use these applications, search for NYT Hawk Cam.
The mobile feed is exciting since it will allow hawk watchers to go to the park, and get a webcam view of the nest on their mobile devices, while simultaneously watching the other parent off the nest.
The ledge the nest sits on is fairly deep, so the brooding female is usually hidden from the street. But if all goes well and the eggs hatch, the eyasses will be easy to see after three or four weeks.
My video and photographs from the park perspective on Thursday evening are below.
As I came into the park, there was a wonderful rainbow over the east side. Later, I followed the the dark female fron the “Woody” building to the Beresford Apartments. In Lola’s favorite spot, it was like seeing a ghost.
Watching a hawk sitting on a nest takes patience! Tonight, at the Riverside Park nest near the Boat Basin, it took lots of patience. The female sat on the nest and almost nothing happened. All of this is a good sign, but it makes for a dull evening.
