Dora is on the left, Christo on the right.
I got the feeling I was interrupting a quiet moment. For the first time I can recall, Dora paid me a lot of attention. She usually gives me a glance, but today, she kept staring and seemed to react to the sound of my camera.
She took off first, so I followed her as I don't get to see her up close that often. She proceeded to lead me all over the park, making me run repeatedly back and forth between Avenues A & B. Forget the gym, Dora is my new personal trainer!
She finally settled down atop the Boys Club on Avenue A & 10th Street, but didn't seem very interested in all the pigeons flying around.
After a time, she took off soaring and I noticed both hawks were circling around a third bird that was passing over the park.
A raven!
The hawks escorted the raven out of the park, west towards Broadway where it made a sharp right turn and seemed to dive towards Union Square. I've only ever seen one other raven in the neighborhood, so I was really excited to see this.
A while later, the hawk pair reunited atop the Christodora building. Dora is on the left, Christo on the right.
Christo twists his head all the way upside-down to watch Dora fly by. I don't think any amount of yoga could enable me to do this.
After four hours of flying around the park, Christo caught a pigeon and proceeded to eat it in the big tree near Avenue A &7th Street, where they'd been sitting when I arrived. Dora sat patiently on an upper branch and watched him intently. When he was apparently done with half the meal, she swooped in and ate the rest. I never saw her attempt to hunt herself. If she is my personal trainer, then maybe Christo is her personal chef.
Dinner over, Christo took to a fire escape on Avenue A above Ray's Candy.
It looked to me like he was settling in to roost.
I had such a hard time walking away from him at this point, but the sun had gone behind the buildings and my hands were frozen.
As I left him there, Dora perched three blocks up the street atop the cross of St Nicholas of Myra.
See more hawk photos on my Flickr page.
Previous hawk posts.
