Before I went on vacation, I went by and saw the freshly hatched eyasses nesting on the Astoria side of the RFK Bridge. I finally got back to see how they were doing on Saturday. The two of them looked great.
They look healthy and very grown up. Their tails need to grow in before they’ll be flying off, but they’ll be leaving the nest soon.
I can’t figure out what’s going on at the Riverside Park nest. Close inspection of the nest for a few hours, showed some hopeful signs such as the mother up high on the nest, her leaving the nest a few times, and both parents looking into the nest. But nothing definitive.
The mother ate on the nest, but she seemed to be eating all the food herself and not sharing it with young eyasses.
Have the eggs hatched and we’re seeing odd behavior due to the heat, or have they not hatched and the heat has changed the mother’s behavior?
It’s difficult to know what’s going on at the Riverside nest. Behavior has changed, with the mother sitting high up on the nest and spending time on the edge of the nest.
If this was May, we’d all suspect that her eggs had hatched. But in July, is it just the 100+ degree weather? These photographs were taken over the last three days.
It’s been at least 30 days since the Riverside female started sitting on her nest with her second clutch. It’s hard to figure out when she actually laid her eggs, since Red-tails often start sitting on their nests a few days before they start laying their eggs, so calculating the exact hatch date is difficult. However, it should be any day now.
On Saturday, it hadn’t happened yet. No signs of a feeding, the mother leaving the nest alone for a few minutes, or an adoring pair of parents looking into the nest.
The evening at the Cathedral started with the adult male up on the eastern side of the building. He was in an area that protected him against the attacks of a pair of American Kestrels. Eventually, he took off towards Manhattan Avenue and 110th with an American Kestrel in tow.
I went on a walk through Morningside Park to find the fledgling expecting to find it in a tree. However, I took a look back at the Cathedral just in case from the ballfields, and much to my surprise, I saw the fledgling sitting on the nest!
It was eating. I guess the nest must be a safe place to eat with the two Kestrels being so aggressive. After eating the fledgling then made a number of stops, being harassed by either Kestrels, Robins or Jays the whole time. The stops included trees in Morningside Park, trees on Morningside Drive, the Cathedral School, and eventually somewhere in the Cathedral grounds.
The fledgling at St. John flew from a St. Luke’s rooftop, over to the top of a large arch on the Cathedral. It then went to a high platform before landing on a few of the finials. It eventually landed inside a section of a fancy section of a finial. This seems to solve a mystery of a few nights ago, where the fledgling seemed to disappear into thin air.
