Wednesday, April 16, 2014

After the storm

I was worried about Dora last night as the wind and rain raged, concerned she might be blown off the nest, but our hawks are rugged and fared just fine.

Just before sunset tonight, I caught up with Christo who was hunting for an evening meal.  His habit lately is to sit atop the flag pole outside the bathrooms in Tompkins Square, where he can see prey in the garden.  Tonight, he caught a sparrow.

Christo catches a sparrow

I'm not sure if that was his primary target as he ran around under the bushes for several seconds before catching it.  He then carried it off...

Christo with sparrow

...to the nest where he passed it off to Dora and he took over nest duties.

Christo passes a sparrow off to Dora

She took the sparrow to a nearby tree where she ripped off the head and ate it in two bites.

Dora with sparrow

I had a photo of the bird's head, but it was too horrible ot post, so here are the feet...

Dora downs some sparrow feet

Then Dora went exploring!  She spent some time flying around CHARAS on 9th Street...

Dora atop CHARAS

And visited a neighbor's air conditioner at the Christodora.

Dora visits a neighbor's a/c

After she'd stretched her wings, Dora returned to the nest and Christo took off to the park.

Christo leaves the nest

He landed in a tree directly above a film crew.  The actors kept shouting, "Drop your weapon!" and I wanted to follow and get a shot with the bird right above the scene, but the movie police were out in force and I couldn't access the entire south end of the park. 

Until next time...

See more hawk photos on my Flickr page:
City Hawks 2
City Hawks 1

Previous hawk posts.

2 comments:

  1. A busy day! Gad the eggs are OK up there...

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  2. We should have updated nest pics soon, but I hear Dora was hunkered way down in the nest during the nasty weather.

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