Christmas with Christo and Amelia

I spent Christmas Day in Tompkins Square Park with resident red-tailed hawks, Christo and Amelia. It was a beautiful cold sunny winter day, and the park was mostly quiet. 

The cold weather (about 27°F) caused Christo to remain fluffed up, trapping warm air with his feathers.

He conserved energy by perching for long periods of time in the sun.

As he sat in this tree, an immature Cooper's hawk joined him. I've seen Christo share trees - and even branches - with Cooper's hawks many times. He's highly tolerant of them for reasons only he knows.

Later, Christo flew around the Christodora building on Avenue B.

As he did that, Amelia perched on the cross of St Nicholas of Myra church on Avenue A.

She took off, revealing a full crop.

Back in the park, Christo actively hunted for rats.

He made a couple of unsuccessful dives at rodents as they scurried beneath some bushes.

He flew past me very close - so close that I chopped his wings and feet out of the photo.

The hawks aren't bothered by the cold. If anything, they seem more active in winter than they do in hot summer.

I'll never get tired of Christo looking straight at me. I really wish he could tell me what he's thinking.

Christo nabbed two small rats in the span of about ten minutes. In the photo below, he's holding one in his talons. In the few seconds it took me to get closer to him, he'd swallowed it whole.

Here is a view of the feather pattern on Christo's back. Also note the white tips of his tail feathers and the position of the black band across the red feathers. These are features that can be used to identify him. The dark cheek patch under his eye is also visible here, which is one of his identifying marks.

After eating, Christo met up with Amelia on Avenue A.

Something caught Christo's attention and he took off south along Avenue A. Amelia soon followed.

All in all, it was a peaceful day and the hawks had plenty to eat. Merry Christmas.

More interesting vocals from Amelia, and a winter hawk round-up

Tompkins Square red-tails, Amelia and Christo, have been keeping very busy lately with battling young interlopers. In this post from December 7, I was able to get a recording of Amelia making some interesting chirping sounds while dealing with an immature red-tail intruder. Since then, I have observed her making those same sounds while fighting an immature hawk, who I presume is the same individual.

Last week, the afternoon seemed calm enough, with Amelia and Christo perched in their usual spots atop the Christodora building on Avenue B.

At some point, something caught their attention and the pair began flying around the park vocalizing. When they make the classic adult red-tailed hawk scream, it's usually because they've spotted an intruder in their territory and are trying to chase it out. 

 

Amelia eventually landed on the cross of St Nicholas of Myra church on Avenue A, but I lost track of Christo.

Both hawks kept flying around chaotically until sunset, when I was no longer able to see what was going on. 

This same scene repeated itself for several days. All three hawks would chase each other around after dark, making a commotion, but I wasn't able to get photos or video because of the darkness. Friday evening, I was able to get another audio recording of Amelia and the immature red-tail as they battled in the trees. My impression was the young hawk wanted to roost in the park, but Amelia would not have any of it, and kept knocking the intruder out of the trees. At one point, it was so dark that even she got tangled in tree branches and had to give up and go roost somewhere else.

This is the recording of the angry hawk sounds - not exactly a voice you might expect from fighting hawks!

I've noticed that these incidents involve both Christo and Amelia as they work together to defend their turf, but Christo is the first to give up the fight as darkness falls. Maybe he can't see as well, or just doesn't feel as threatened? Amelia, on the other hand, continues to fight off the intruder(s) as long as she possibly can. 

 

I don't know if the young red-tail they have been fighting is the same individual (there are several around this time of year), but the one I have seen going up against Amelia is a force with whom to be reckoned. It has a lot of nerve, and is not easily intimidated.

Anyway, it's been fascinating to observe. Below is a round-up of winter photos of Amelia and Christo, some immature red-tails, and a couple of Cooper's hawks.

Amelia:

Immature red-tail:

Another immature red-tail aggressively confronting the first.

The battle for the tree branch over, one of them took off.

I really love how red-tails look in winter. Their coloring contrasts nicely with gray winter skies.

My favorite lighting is low bright sun beaming in against dark storm clouds. This happened recently on Avenue A and I was lucky enough to catch Amelia lit up with the dark sky behind her, but she wasn't very cooperative about posing.

Here she is on an overly bright day.

Amelia joining Christo on the cross:

A different day, Christo perched on top of the cross while Amelia sat on the right.

A short while later, the two changed position with Amelia on the left and Christo taking off from the top.

Another day, Amelia took off from the top of the cross. I keep telling myself I'm going to stop photographing them on this perch because I have hundreds of versions of this photo, and it's getting really tedious, but I just can't help myself when I see them up there.

I've been seeing a good number of Cooper's hawks around this winter as well. This one is an adult.

And this one is an immature, seen earlier this week.

Here is a closer view of the same hawk. I was trying to count the number of House Sparrows in a bush when the hawk dove in and scattered them all, lol. And so it goes...

Tompkins Square hawk action after dark - Amelia makes interesting vocalizations

Late Monday afternoon, I found Tompkins Square red-tailed hawk pair, Christo and Amelia, taking in the last of the sun as it gave up the sky to a bank of gray clouds.

As they perched atop the cross of St Nicholas of Myra church on Avenue A, something caught their attention.

 

Amelia took off first, flying over my head and into a tree. Christo followed, screaming loudly.

The pair perched in the same tree, both of them screaming, obviously upset. Then I saw the cause of their distress: an immature red-tailed hawk perched lower in the tree. Intruder alert!

A few days prior, I saw Christo and Amelia flying around the park, chasing this immature hawk. Could it be the same individual? It's possible, but I can't be sure.

This particular hawk completely ignored the screams of the adult hawks, as did everyone walking by on the street.

The hawk's position in the tree made it impossible for Christo or Amelia to easily get to it, and the younger hawk seemed to know this and remained perched and relaxed.

Eventually, Christo flew off towards the middle of the park and Amelia flew away as well. The sun had set and it was getting dark, so I figured they were going off to roost for the night.

As soon as they were out of range, the young hawk swooped down and caught a rat that was foraging on the ground with some pigeons.

 

This photo isn't great because it was so dark, but you can see the size of the rat as the hawk flies off with it.

The hawk quickly took the rat to the closest tree, but kept its wings and tail spread, mantling its prey in a defensive posture.

I looked around and could see Amelia perched in a nearby tree, watching.

I expected Amelia to come steal the rat, wondering of maybe she allowed the intruder to catch the prey so she could take it away. I have not seen Amelia doing this before, but I did observe Christo and Dora taking prey from a Cooper's hawk in the park back in 2015.

The young red-tail must have suspected Amelia could take its dinner, so the hawk kept its back to her and its wings and tail spread wide.

It awkwardly ate the entire rat this way, resembling a huge turkey up in the tree.

 

You want a piece of this?!

Amelia watched the hawk from her perched but never attempted to take its meal. The intruder was definitely mindful of her presence, but if it was really afraid of her, it would not have eaten the rat right in front of her. This hawk acted remarkably confident.

When the meal was over, I expected the hawk to fly away and go roost because it was well after sunset and hard to see anything without the help of the lights within the park. To my surprise, the intruder flew right into the tree where Amelia was and perched right beneath her! 

I think Amelia was surprised as well, and she dropped down on top of the interloper. In the photo below, Amelia is on the right and the young hawk is on the left with its tail raised. They scuffled along the branches for a few seconds before Amelia regained her composure and chased the other hawk into the middle of the park where Christo was waiting. All three brawled in a tree, before flying off where I lost them in the dark.

During all this activity, Amelia made a sound I'd never heard her make before. I've heard her make the classic adult red-tailed hawk scream plenty of times, and the chirping sound they make when feeding young in the nest, but this was different.

A few weeks ago, I caught Christo making some squeaky sounds I'd never heard before. This time, I managed to catch a brief recording of Amelia making the sound. You can hear her in the first ten seconds of this recording, followed by the sounds of white-throated sparrows. She sounds like a squeak toy.

I wish all of this had happened in daylight so I could have captured video, or even better photos, but the birds are wild and they do what they do when they do it.