Red-tails on Riverside

Earlier this week, I finished reading Marie Winn’s enchanting book Red-Tails in Love about the famous Central Park hawk, Pale Male, and his attempts to raise a family on the side of a Fifth Avenue apartment building. (I don’t use the world “enchanting” that often, but in this case it fits. Winn’s book transforms Central Park into a magical place, full of natural wonders and real-life stories as engrossing as any fairy tale.) Near the end of the book, Winn mentions that she lives at 92nd Street and Riverside Drive, which just happens to be three blocks away from me.

Intrigued, I looked up her website, where she was reporting on a new set of amorous red-tails currently building a nest near us in Riverside Park. By the end of the week, the new hawks had made The New York Times. This morning, I finally got out and saw them for myself. Here’s my field report:

We had a little snow last night, but it didn’t carry through to the morning like predicted. In fact, it was pretty sunny. I got to the park about 10:30 and started looking for the hawk’s nest — or more accurately, I looked for other people looking for the hawk’s nest, because I figured that would be a quicker way to find it.

It didn’t take long to spot a group of people on the path, shielding their eyes and looking up toward the tops of the buildings on Riverside Drive. When I got to the group, they pointed out the tiny specks circling high above us, barely visible in the bright sun. I was kind of disappointed. I had been hoping for a closer view. But the half-built nest was nearby and easy to see, practically overhanging the Westside Highway. It looks fragile, perched out there on a limb pretty far from the trunk of the tree with cars passing almost directly below. But I assume the hawks have a better idea than I do of the best place to build a nest.

As I used the zoom on my camera to get a closer look, I heard a tell-tale sign that I remembered from Winn’s book: All the birds in my vicinity started squawking like crazy. That’s a good clue that there’s a hawk nearby. Sure enough, one of them came in for a landing, and I managed to snap a picture. The first hawk spent about 15 minutes in the nest alone before its mate joined it for a quick visit, and then the two took off and didn’t come back for at least half an hour. So I had managed to get there at the right time to see some action.

As I was waiting to see if they would return, several other people came looking for the nest. It was my turn to point it out to people. One couple, Diana and Benoit, had heard about the hawks via an e-mail alert on Friday from the Riverside Park Fund. They were making a Saturday afternoon Fairway run (an Upper West Side tradition) and stopped by to try to catch a glimpse of the city’s newest high-flying celebrities.

“The west side is getting wilder and wilder,” Benoit said as we talked. “We’ve got raptors now.” Diana and I discussed the precarious-seeming position of the nest and agreed that the hawks must know best. “It’s their feng shui,” Diana said.

She’s probably right. These hawks are New Yorkers, after all.

Photo: Scott Dodd (more at Flickr)

Tags: nature, redtailhawks, riversidepark