All around the neighborhood, hawks are latching onto air conditioners, building cornices and railings. It’s hawk mating season and the Upper West Side is a hot place to pick up a hawk date, apparently.
Readers have recently sent in some great shots:
Photos by Denton Taylor. “I’m walking the dog on WEA and there on the sidewalk is a juicy pigeon wing. Ah, a hawk in the nabe! Then I get home to my Lincoln Towers apt and I’m talking on the phone and I see a bird that doesn’t look like a pigeon land on a terrace across from me. I grab the binocs and yes! It so happens I had my tripod already set up in the L/R for something else I was doing, so I grab the 100-400mm and start shooting. Hawks in Manhattan, awesome!”
Photo by Yael Shulman. “I noticed pigeon feathers flying everywhere on the ground and I looked up and saw this giant hawk eating a pdgeon for lunch! Here is a picture attached of him I happened to catch on my iPhone looking stoic after he ate the pigeon. I believe it is a Red Tail Hawk! This is on a window right above Cleanport cleaners between 97th and 98th St. and Broadway!”
Re: “Hawks in Manhattan, awesome!”
HAH!! For youse two-legged types, maybe. But, for us four-legged types, NOT SO HOT.
Not interested in becoming a hawk-snack, so I’m headin’ for the subway! Bring donuts…pizza…chikken wings!
The hawk in the first two photos is a juvenile, and so still a year away from the dating scene. The hawk in the third photo might be an adult, possibly from the new CPW nest.
In any event, there are two or three pairs of red-tails trying to nest on the Upper West Side and Morningside Heights. The nest at the Cathedral of St. John’s is expecting a hatch any day now.
The status on the new nest on CPW in the 90s is hard to say after the building contractors interfered (perhaps you saw the article in the Post last week?). The female there had laid at least one egg before the trouble; latest I have heard is that the hawks may be trying to build a new nest on a different building.
There are supposed to still be a pair of red-tails in Riverside Park, replacements for the Boat Basin pair who died of rat poisoning, but word on a nesting site has yet to circulate.
do you mean the hawks ate poisined rat, or they ate rat poison?
They ate poisoned rats. Their offspring had also been fed the poisoned rats and died prior to the parents’ deaths.
Hawks in NYC how fantastic. They eat pigeons!! Who knew. A double blessing. We get to see these beautiful birds and solve the overpopulation of pigeons problem at the same time.
Pigeons in NYC seem to be as ubiquitous as the rats.