Splish, Splash! in Tompkins Square Park

Chasing hawks has many, many rewards. One of the most exciting experiences is to see young red-tailed hawks cooling off in the water. I've done a couple of videos already, and here's another. This is Part VIII of the July With the Tompkins Square Park Hawks series. I'm jumping from Part IV to Part VIII, because July 22 was such a great day for watching the babies and a parent. I'll give you Parts V, VI and VII soon.

July 22, in the sprayer area north of the bathrooms in Tompkins Square Park.

The afternoon started out with one baby hawk finding some leftover pigeon on a branch on the east side of the park. We watched the kid for a while, until the youngster flew north. We then found two youngsters (not sure if one was the same one we just had, or the two other kids) in the play area north of the bathrooms. At first they were in trees looking down on the spray, but the day was very, very hot, and the water way too enticing. Down they came! The people were really great, allowing the hawks their time in the water without disturbing them.

Lest you think the kids had no adult supervision, Christo was sitting in the bird bath nearby, keeping an eye on the children. (I think it was Christo. If Dora, let me know!) When the kids flew to a nearby fence, Christo flew to a tree over the water. One of the kids flew over and dislodged him, and he flew south (maybe to another water park?). The kids stayed for a while, drying off.

Children in the water need supervision, and Christo is keeping an eye on them.

I hope you enjoy the video of this wonderful time in Tompkins Square Park. It was such a thrill to be a part of their little hawky lives on one very hot afternoon.

July With the Tompkins Square Hawks: Parts I-IV

I've been going to Tompkins Square Park a lot to see the five red-tailed hawks (two adults and three youngsters), and they have been wildly entertaining. I've posted other videos and photos of these hawks, but am now putting together a series of videos featuring them. 

Tompkins Square Park, July 1, 2016

I'm trying to give a sense of the hawks, how they behave, play, hunt, eat and just hang around. My camera is not great for capturing flight shots or action video, but I do what I can. As with all of my videos, watch what you want, skip around, enjoy them for what they are. They are long, but are sort of a documentation.

These videos are from July 1 (the day I thought I saw rat poison being put out), July 2, July 8 and July 10. I will be adding more later in another posting. I decided not to use music (except music playing in the park), so you'll hear either silence (when my conversation or that of others was particularly inane) or park sounds.

These photos are from July 1. Photos from the other three days will be added to this posting later (still going through them). The first photo is from a smaller little garden area just east of Tompkins Square Park. The fence surrounding the little garden is decorated with art, apparently from found objects. Just delightful. The second photo is of Christo, the red-tailed father. The third photo shows one of his offspring on a branch above him. The offspring is bigger!

Pale Male and His Kids Find Dinner

There are three graphic videos in this posting. I watched Pale Male, our Central Park celebrity red-tailed hawk, dining on pigeon on June 30, after repeatedly calling to his two youngsters to "come 'n' get it!" On July 7, I saw one of his youngsters raiding a robins' nest, and on July 9, I saw a Pale Male youngster eating a starling.

On July 7, after I finished a day of background work in Queens, I return to Manhattan and got off the train at 59th Street and Fifth Avenue. I saw Woody, then walked north to Conservatory Pond to look for Pale Male's kids. I found one sitting above the tables at the outdoor cafe east of the water.

The young hawk looked around, spotted something, then flew near the Alice in Wonderland statue and perched briefly ...

... before returning just north of the cafe, where it attacked a robins' nest. The young hawk ate the robin nestlings, as I saw his father do last year so many times, as the hysterical robins cried and bombarded the predator to no avail.

I do not recommend this video to any who are upset by violence in nature. I almost couldn't watch, although I did take the video (which is very jumpy in spots). These hawks are so beautiful, but they can be brutal.

The bird then flew to a tree just south, where the youngster was joined by the sibling. The sibling had a crop the size of a cantaloupe, indicating the young hawk had also eaten very well. When I left, the two birds were perched, one atop the other, in the tree.

On July 9, a Pale Male kid ate starling. I am not sure whether the young hawk caught it, or if it was brought in by Pale Male. 

On June 30 around noon, Central Park's celebrity red-tailed hawk, Pale Male, flew over the 79th Street transverse with a pigeon and landed on a tree above Glade Arch. He called his two youngsters to have lunch. He kept calling as he plucked the pigeon and moved to another branch. After a quarter of an hour, he began to eat the pigeon, but kept calling softly to his fledglings. They never came, and Pale Male finished the meal.

I then left for the Yankees game, with some very striking video and photos.

Pale Male with pigeon, Glade Arch, June 30.

I did not add music to the video, and kept as much sound on as I could so you can hear the robins and blue jays screaming and hear the camera clicks. I removed the inane conversations I was hearing.