Father's Day with the Divines, Sunday, 18 JUN 2006 and RPS's friday evening notes and photo.

PHOTOGRAPH BY ROBERT SCHMUNK

Robert Schmunk, uptown Hawkwatcher and photographer, graciously sent in his notes and photos from Friday, June 16th. The evening before Youngest stepped off into the air for the first time. They are very telling about what eventually occurred the next morning.

(My photos and notes of today follow his.)

Rob says,
" I missed the Friday evening feeding, but returned to the cathedral at about 7:30 to find almost all the hawkwatchers had left for the evening.A couple events of note that occurred after that...At 7:43 Youngest hopped out onto St. Andrew's hand, and began flapping around a lot. Then back into the nest for safety. Repeat at least three times. With all the flapping I thought she was going to fly, perhaps because she almost fell at leasttwice. But no luck. By 7:47 she was back in the nest and that was it for her.See http://www.flickr.com/photos/rbs10025/168653869/in/set-72157594167287989/Then a bit after 8:00, Eldest left a perch atop the scaffolding and flew across113th St. and perched atop Dad's favorite urn atop St. Luke's. She stayed therefor a few minutes and then flew to the urn immediately north of that, then aftera minute down the iron scaffolding on the east face of St Luke's. It looked like she settled in for the night there. Seehttp://www.flickr.com/photos/rbs10025/168653979/in/set-72157594167287989/During all of the above, Dad was perched on an urn at St. Luke's, but not hisusual. Instead he was on the urn to the west."

rbs

Rob just sent in a correction, upon closer scrutiny it was Mom perched on the urn instead of Dad in the last notation above. D. B.

the Sunday Evening Hunt
6:49pm Hustling up the hill, scanning, nothing yet. Have any Divines decided to go back to the nest. No, empty and lifeless. Wait, there are Robins scolding in the London Planes near the hawk nest. I see a lump up there! I'm attempting to get the scope on the lump when Southern Hawkwatcher, Jean Dane arrives. She gets her binoculars on it ...it's the Robin's nest. Not exactly what we had in mind.

Susan of the red hair and the bicycle cruises in and she has no good news either. Then it's photographer and birder Rob Schmunk. No on his end as well. We split up to look. Jean and Susan decide to go north on a tromp, I go west for the stone yard's view.


Jude and Simon know where the fledges are, but they only talk to each other. No help there. In fact they even look like I'm interrupting.

Back on the scaffolding by any chance? Nope.

Wait, is that an eyass making a couple of begging calls?


How about the chimney on The Plant Pavilion. Nope. The other chimneys. Nope. Nope.


I search the urn. Nope. All the urns, nope, nope, nope.

Somehow the whole area seems sadly deserted. We're on to the next phase and it can be very frustrating.

For 30 minutes we search the trees in Morningside Park and decide that it could use a few more Blue Jays as we seem to need their scolding at the moment to locate the Fledges. We're beginning to feel a bit disheartened. Will it be a completly dry day?


7:31pm Mom is discovered perched on the scaffolding building across the green space on the other side of the park.


7:42pm We've decided to call it a day and are beginning to walk away down the sidwalk when suddenly Susan says, "LOOK." And there is Divine Mom, big as day, sitting on the chimney just west of the balcony and looking down into it, where I'd heard a rather halfhearted "beg" earlier.

The Divine M. is quite the stealth vixen. 11 minutes ago she was across the park. We've been standing searching the facade of the cathedral nearly ever since, so she waited until our four sets of eyes were elsewhere and then cruised in cool as you please without any of us seeing her.


Mom, quite the beauty, sits, head and eyes doing a constant monitoring of the territory and undoubtedly the Fledges as well. Lot of good it does our prying eyes.

8:14pm Mom flies to the middle urn on the east side of The Plant Pavilion, overlooking the park. Though we follow her eyes, we can't see the Fledglings. They are safely tucked in for the night. And Dad? We've checked his favorite spots. Perhaps he's picked a new one to celebrate Father's Day. He has done a fine job of it after all.