Riverside Park Red-tailed Hawks

Riverside Nest

The first day the Riverside female started sitting on this year’s nest was March 8th.  This doesn’t mean she laid eggs that day, but it’s the day we can start counting forward.  Red-tailed Hawk egg incubation takes between 25-32 days.  Add to that the time it takes to lay eggs and the few days it takes for a hatchling to strong enough to stand up and be spotted, and you might need to add as much as a week more.

So, that puts the nest watch into high gear if my math is correct.  We might see eyasses by next weekend.

The weather wasn’t kind over the last month, and the large storm that flooded much of Rhode Island may mean the area will have lots of hawk nest failures.  Let’s keep our fingers crossed.  The Riverside nest is the most exposed nest we have in Manhattan.

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Highbridge Park Red-tailed Hawks

Highbridge Park Nest

This year the hawks nesting in upper Highbridge Park have moved their nest lower and a few blocks north.  If you’re a good hill climber, you can get a decent look into the nest. This area seems to be a great spot for Red-tailed Hawks even though it is surrounded by highways and apartment buildings. 

The female stayed on the nest the entire time I was up at the nest.  Any pictures of a hawk off the nest are of the male.

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General News

Urban Wildlife Appreciation Day

The Urban Park Rangers are excited about an event this Saturday and asked me to help promote it.  It sounds like a lot of fun with lots of great activities for both adults and kids.  It looks like the weather is going to be great too with a sunny day and a high of 62 degrees.

Urban Wildlife Appreciation Day

Fort Tryon Park, Cloister Lawn
Saturday, April 10, 2010
11:30 a.m.-3:00 p.m.

Getting to the park is easy.  Take the A train to 190th Street and exit the station by elevator. Walk north along Margaret Corbin Drive for approximately ten minutes or transfer to the M4 bus and ride north one stop.

Get up close and personal with NYC’s wild residents. Learn about squirrels, raccoons, coyotes, skunks, eagles and more. Enjoy musical performances, live animals, and kid’s activities.  Also, mounted park enforcement patrol will be there with their horses.  Discover the best places in NYC and NYS to watch wildlife. With the Fort Tryon Park Trust.  Ethnic food will be available for purchase.

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Central Park Coyotes

Thank You New York

It's wonderful when governmental agencies do something right.  Last week, city agencies rescued a frightened coyote from Tribeca, transported it to Animal Care and Control (ACC), and quickly released it into a more wild area of New York City.

The Parks Department, Animal Care and Control, the NYPD's Emergency Service Unit, New York State's DEC and the city Health Department all worked together to ensure that this animal was treated humanly. A young female coyote that got lost in Tribeca, and could easily have been killed in traffic, was relocated to a more suitable area to continue her life.

Behind the scenes, members of these organizations had already been meeting to discuss the proper handling of coyotes in the city and had developed a protocol to handle them humanly when relocation is needed.

Now that coyotes are breeding in the Bronx, we'll have more and more encounters with them in New York City.  It's not going to be perfect.  Both man and coyote will have to cooperate, and occasionally, an aggressive coyote habituated to humans may have to be destroyed.  But in general, with educational efforts, I think man and coyote have a good chance to leave together with minimal conflict in the Big Apple.