Photo courtesy of palemale.com
Pale Male and Pale Beauty in a courtship flight.
Red-tail literature says that when a Red-tail pair have their talons hanging down that they will finish the flight with copulation. We have seen in Central Park that that is not necessarily the case but it does mean that copulation could happen any day or even any minute now.
Photo courtesy of palemale.com
Pale Male always a great bringer of twigs, heads for the nest with still another. I'm hoping that this year there will more twigs placed at the bottom of the bowl, instead of just fresh nest lining, just in case cold in the bowl has been a problem with the previous failed nests. Plus selfishly, if the bottom of the bowl is raised by multiple inches we will again be able to see the head of the hawk sitting on the eggs.
Photo courtesy of palemale.com
Now isn't this a demure, flirtatious but pointed look from Pale Beauty?
Photograph courtesy of philly.com
A juvenile Red-tail has a pigeon dinner atop a parked car in downtown Philadelphia.
I was particularly interested in the following article talking about urban hawk antics and their booming population in Philadelphia. Specifically in Center City, where I lived in the '80's.
Not only did I live in Center City, currently the haunt of hawks, but daily I went uptown to Temple University with it's expanses of big scattered trees and lawns, habit typically partial to hunting Red-tails, when I was in their graduate program- Not once did I see a hawk of any description. Nor did I see one when I crossed Rittenhouse Square every day for six months to act in a play in a theatre on the other side of the Square from where I lived. Peter O'Toole in evening dress, I saw in the Square, he gave me a little bow and a very charming smile, but not one bird of any species with talons
THINGS HAVE DEFINITELY CHANGED!
City's new pastime: Talon shows
Hawks' rebound = downtown dining.It was just another Center City killing, except it happened in broad daylight and a crowd gathered to watch. An adolescent red-tailed hawk landed on the roof of a black car near Eighth and Market, sank its talons into a pigeon, and proceeded to chow down.
Feathers and entrails flew. Video phones were deployed. Bystanders groaned. The bird, unfazed, kept eating.
Then, having finished its meal, the hawk flew to a nearby lamppost for a postprandial nap, leaving the returning motorist to deal with the bloody pulp and fluff scattered atop the car.
That close encounter with nature - red in tooth and claw, and vividly captured on a YouTube video - was certainly dramatic, but such hawk sightings are no longer rare in Philadelphia.
So many YouTube videos document hawk kills in the city that they practically constitute a genre. Besides recording the mayhem on Market Street, humans have filmed hawks in mid-bite in Rittenhouse Square, on the University of Pennsylvania campus, in the Philadelphia Museum of Art's sculpture garden, and in the yards of Bella Vista rowhouses. One local bystander narrowly missed becoming collateral damage when a large redtail dived for a squirrel outside the museum. The squirrel got away.
One reason for the run-ins with redtails is that raptor populations have made a remarkable comeback in the last five years, and they've done so, ornithologists say, by moving into downtowns. Once a habitué of North America's grasslands, hawks have discovered that cities are safe places to raise a brood, and they offer a 24-hour smorgasbord of pigeons, rats, and squirrels.
"We have a pretty good view of Logan Square, and we see them hunting all the time," said Dan Thomas, who manages the bird collection for the Academy of Natural Sciences. Not long ago, he added, a colleague went to fetch the academy's van from the alley behind the museum only to discover a Cooper's hawk enjoying a pigeon on the roof.
There was a time when a person couldn't get within 10 yards of a hawk kill, said Kevin McGowan, a scientist at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology in Ithaca, N.Y. That may still be the case in rural areas. But as hawks settle in cities, they've grown more accustomed to people.
The fact that a bird would even allow people to watch it eat, McGowan said, suggests...
For more, including comments in the article by our own hawk expert John Blakeman, click the link.
It was just another Center City killing, except it happened in broad daylight and a crowd gathered to watch. An adolescent red-tailed hawk landed on the roof of a black car near Eighth and Market, sank its talons into a pigeon, and proceeded to chow down.
Feathers and entrails flew. Video phones were deployed. Bystanders groaned. The bird, unfazed, kept eating.
Then, having finished its meal, the hawk flew to a nearby lamppost for a postprandial nap, leaving the returning motorist to deal with the bloody pulp and fluff scattered atop the car.
That close encounter with nature - red in tooth and claw, and vividly captured on a YouTube video - was certainly dramatic, but such hawk sightings are no longer rare in Philadelphia.
So many YouTube videos document hawk kills in the city that they practically constitute a genre. Besides recording the mayhem on Market Street, humans have filmed hawks in mid-bite in Rittenhouse Square, on the University of Pennsylvania campus, in the Philadelphia Museum of Art's sculpture garden, and in the yards of Bella Vista rowhouses. One local bystander narrowly missed becoming collateral damage when a large redtail dived for a squirrel outside the museum. The squirrel got away.
One reason for the run-ins with redtails is that raptor populations have made a remarkable comeback in the last five years, and they've done so, ornithologists say, by moving into downtowns. Once a habitué of North America's grasslands, hawks have discovered that cities are safe places to raise a brood, and they offer a 24-hour smorgasbord of pigeons, rats, and squirrels.
"We have a pretty good view of Logan Square, and we see them hunting all the time," said Dan Thomas, who manages the bird collection for the Academy of Natural Sciences. Not long ago, he added, a colleague went to fetch the academy's van from the alley behind the museum only to discover a Cooper's hawk enjoying a pigeon on the roof.
There was a time when a person couldn't get within 10 yards of a hawk kill, said Kevin McGowan, a scientist at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology in Ithaca, N.Y. That may still be the case in rural areas. But as hawks settle in cities, they've grown more accustomed to people.
The fact that a bird would even allow people to watch it eat, McGowan said, suggests...
For more, including comments in the article by our own hawk expert John Blakeman, click the link.
HAPPY HAWKING!
Donegal Browne
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