Photo courtesy of http://www.palemale.com/
Here are longtime Hawk Watcher Stella Hamilton's saturday notes from the field-- Pale Male and Octavia of the 927 Fifth Avenue nest.
Dear Donna,
I spent most of the afternoon hawk watching at the Hawkbench.
I arrived at approximately 3:15. Palemale was on the nest, and Octavia was soaring .
3:28 Palemale leaves nest and meets up with Octavia on her favorite mating tree , an oak tree on 76th and 5th, and guess why .... To mate. Palemale then flies off .and
3:31 Pale Male returns to nest at with a twig and places it in deep part of the nest bowl.
3:55 Both hawks soar.
4:00 Palemale flies with small prey and eats it on terrace of building we call the ship or boat building. Plenty going on here.
I decided to check out what's happening at the Plaza Hotel.
4:20 I arrived at the Plaza and stayed there for about a half hour , but saw no hawks at all. I walked back up town to watch Palemale and Octavia.
There was a lot of soaring and nest time together .
At 5:05, both hawks were on the nest, then Octavia leaves nest and flies to her favorite mating tree on 76th. No mating observed at this time.
Octavia decides to roost on tree on 72nd and Palemale roosts on tree on East Drive a few yards west of Alice in Wonderland.
Stella Hamilton
Keep 'em coming Stella!
Photo courtesy of http://www.palemale.com/NEXT UP, NEST LINING
When it comes time to line the bowl of their nests, many NYC hawks peel the inner bark from trees as their material of chose for cozy nest bowl lining. I've watched Pale Male, Lola, Charlotte, Junior, Athena, and Riverside Mom all do it in person and many other NYC hawks via photo. Therefore I'd thought without really thinking about it, that bark was, when available, the material of choice for nest bowls by urban Red-tails.
And that dear readers is what one gets for thinking something without really thinking about it. One must watch for those sneaky assumptions.
As it turns out, my thought was just that, an assumption. And it was wrong.
I would have thought that the Franklin Institute Hawks would be using the inner bark of trees for bowl lining too. Not so.
The male T2 has lined the bowl with evergreen boughs. Now I can't say for sure that there aren't some strips of bark underneath but it looks pretty twiggy below the needles from here.
In Pale Male's nest in past years, it is dry grass from one of the adjacent terrace's flower boxes that is gleaned and laid over the bark.
Now I'm told there are deciduous trees reasonably close to the nest site at the Franklin. Therefore it would appear that the bowl lining of choice there, as opposed to making do as the deciduous bark isn't available, for this pair is evergreen.
My question then is, was this lining chosen after experimentation or was this the lining of say, one or the other hawks natal nest?
Donegal Browne
