Urban Hawks

I’ve had lots of hawk watchers as what’s next for the nest.  Eyasses have to be as big as their parents to fly, so we’ll see rapid growth over the next few weeks.  The eyasses will begin to practice flapping their wings and will explore branches in the tree.

The young fledge at 44 to 46 days of age, and the parents continue to feed their fledglings for another four to seven weeks.  During this time, the young gradually move farther from the nest, improve their flight abilities, and begin to hunt on their own.

This puts the fledge date for this nest somewhere in the third week of August, and the exploration of the park by the fledglings through to October.

The two eyasses were very active in the early evening.  The mother left them alone most of the time I was watching.   (Red-tailed Parents feel comfortable leaving there kids alone, once they are as old as this pair is.  I haven’t figured out triggers the change in behavior.  Is it a change in coloring, the size of the eyasses, or something else?)

If you haven’t visited the nest yet, make a point to see it this weekend.  It’s about two blocks north of the Boat Basin Café.

Chances that there is a third eyass in the Riverside nest decline with each day.  Feeding behavior and other signs make twins rather than triplets the likely situation.

The eyasses are starting to grow their flight feathers.  I love this period of time, because if you watch closely you can figure out how all the major tail and wing feathers are arranged.  Something that is much harder to study once they’ve grown in.

I arrived at Riverside on Sunday after a thunderstorm to find a wet family of hawks.  The father was on a street light drying off and the mother was feeding two eyasses.

The other known Red-tailed Hawk second clutches in the city, Inwood Hill and Astoria/RFK Bridge, both fledged over the last few days.  A fledgling was seen in Inwood Hill by Jessica Ancker (via the Inwoodbirdwatchers Yahoo Group) and Peter Richter has pictures of the fledglings in Astoria on his Queens Raptors blog.

I’ve been busy with work commitments and finally got back to the Riverside nest this evening. 

The Riverside eyasses have grown a lot bigger in just a few days.  The two eyasses are hard to see together, but I definitely saw two today.  (In the videos second section you’ll see a beak down at the butt of the eyass in the foreground for about half a second.)

I like watching eyasses at this stage.  They’re big and active enough to get good glimpses, yet they’re still really cute and fluffy.