Showing posts with label riverside park. Show all posts
Showing posts with label riverside park. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 07, 2011

The Wild Parrots of Riverside Park

After seeing these guys so often near my house, I decided to pay a visit to theirs.
Locating the birds by ear was easy, but they where extremely skittish and warily watched me as I stood beneath the West Side Highway.

There was one bird missing 3 toes.

After some time, I got them going to their nest.


Which had recently been DESTROYED, yet again. Which of course, they were rebuilding.

Yet AGAIN!!!

Keep on keepin on little bros!

Saturday, May 30, 2009

Almost Fledging (Part 2)

The Boat-basin Hawks are doing a great job keeping their little ones fed. The rapid growth has led to some rudimentary branching by the oldest chick. Here they are flapping, hopping, sleeping and generally being awesome little dudes.





The whole family.

Under the watchful eye of the parent. She was carefully eyeing a dog.

Say it loud..."I Love Hawks!!!"

Monday, May 11, 2009

Boat Basin Hawks

Finally got a chance to check out the Riverside Park hawks to see how they were progressing. When I got there, it was mostly cloudy and I had just missed a feeding, so no baby hawks pix, but I did get a few of the proud Mama!




Monday, April 28, 2008

Spring Roundup

After all the waiting, NYC bird activity has finally built up to a fevered pitch. The trees are leafing out, the warblers are running, and this City's raptors are hatching their newest crops of fighter aces! Due to some excellent collaboration, many bloggers established an impromptu network of sightings and followups. So far the count is:
Houston St. (RTH)
1
79th St. & Riverside (RTH)
2?
CCNY
1?
Highbridge (RTH)
2?
Inwood Hll (RTH)
2?
Greenwood Cemetery (RTH)
1
55 Water (peregrines)
1
86th and CPW (kestrels)
1
The 5th ave., 7th ave and St. John red-tailed nests are all still quiet. Should be soon before we know one way or the other for all. Unknown nests include Riverside Church, Broadway Bridge and Met Life for Peregrines and the dozen or so kestrel scrapes around Manhattan. Also there are rumors of Great Horned Owl and Screech owl fledges. Any info on these areas, just shoot me an email. Till then, here's a roundup of the action.
79th St. 1st Baptist Church

The female kestrel who nests down the block.

The nest with female.

Carefully stripping off bits for the babies.

The male dove over the highway from a favored water tower!

A super from a building overlooking the Park confirms 2 chicks, but I was not able to gain entrance. While there, I met another photographer who took some pix from the reverse angle. Here's the a posting of Beth Bergman's excellent photos!

Part of what is great about nests, is that birders congregate and share stories. Beth told of finding a roosting red bat amongst the false cherry blossoms!

Photo Courtesy of Beth Bergman
After witnessing 2 feedings, I wended east to Central Park. I was just getting my camera ready when the male flew in with prey!



He then flew out and landed in the park!

While in the Park, I could just make out the female feeding young!

Up at the Cathedral, the scaffolding is now more extensive than ever.

:(
It should be soon before we know how this nest will turn out.
Here's some warblers!
Female Palm

It was good at catching bugs.

Yellow Rumped Warblers

Ruby Crowned (you can just see this one's).

and a blue headed vireo.

Sunday, March 09, 2008

Sunday Gale

A stiff breeze cleared out the last of the rain. By early morning, there was nothing but a clear, piercing clarity. I knew that hawks would use the favorable wind to make up for the hunting they missed over the last few days. Starting at the Cathedral, I saw first the female, then the male fly into the nest.







The female stayed on the nest for some time while the male circled the Cathedral, flushing pigeons and starlings. I decided to swing over to CCNY while the morning light was still favorable. I saw first one,

then another hawk fly out of the nest!







After a while, neither hawk returned. I caught glimpses of them over the Park, but they didnt return. From there I went to meet Bruce and Chris Lyons to see if we could discover if any redtailed hawks are nesting in Riverside Park near 165th St. To get there, I cut through Trinity Cemetery, where I discovered a nesting pair of crows. They really didnt like me looking, and crowed vigourously at me the whole time.


Over at Trinity Cemetery, no sign of a nest, but I saw 1 Cooper's and 1 jvy RTH.



In Riverside, I spotted two adult RTH's hawking over the trees and occasionally making descents. We were not able to discover the location, but the presence of 2 adults and a juvy do signal that further searches may be warranted.
One of the adults...

and this very lightly colored juvy.



Later, this ring billed

and this female kestrel hunting.

And the Cathedral pair, joining up to ward off a juvy.

I also saw two turkey vultures, and Chris had a juvy bald eagle on the River in the am.