Pale Male, Octavia, and the SCAFFOLDING Plus John Blakeman and Pearl the Red-tail's Age

 Photo courtesy of www.palemale.com/

As of November 21st,  the  scaffolding on 927 Fifth Avenue, the site of Pale Male and Octavia's nest, is now two floors below the nest.  

This is better.  

As the Fifth Avenue pair are human habituated, I've no doubt that even with the scaffolding in its current position, that the hawks will visit the nest site if  and when they feel like it.  

It behooves the workman to finish as rapidly as possible because as time passes the hawks will become more and more hormonal, their invisible boundaries will harden, and though Pale Male and Lola never physically touched anyone on the building in the past, that I know of,  it is remarkably unnerving to have a Red-tail doing close fly-bys at your head and screaming.  It gets your attention.  

Trust me.

Remember Pearl, the Red-tail who demonstrated a variety of maneuvers to elude me?

This was the shot that made me wonder if Pearl was female instead of  my first take, which was that the hawk was male.

John Blakeman who always has his eye on the ball, read the blog and emailed me.  He said, female!

(Not the sharpest shot but remember documentation not beauty is the way to go at times.)

Mr. Blakeman looked at Pearl's belly band, which is quite light and said that Pearl is at least five years old.  The belly band fades over time.

 Now if I hadn't included that shot would we have gotten that tidbit?

Here she is again.  Her  belly band truly is quite light. 
Many thanks John.


And from long time contributor Robin of Illinois, the coyote and the cross country team...
http://www.ryot.org/video-arizona-hs-cross-country-runners-unfazed-coyote-enters-race/470557


Happy Hawking!

Donegal Browne