It's been a week since Dora left Tompkins Square Park to rest and recover at WINORR. She had x-rays taken that revealed no broken bones, but she will remain in rehab for as long as necessary. You can read more about that over at EV Grieve.
In the last few days, Christo and his new mate, Amelia, have been getting along well. They've been working on the nest together and getting comfortable with each other. Below, Amelia is on the left and Christo is on the right. Note the difference in size and the color of their heads.
Amelia and Christo soaring together:
Christo continues to be so industrious, breaking bark off dead branches to take back to the nest.
Christo takes off with Amelia in the background:
The hawk pair continues to mate several times a day. So far, it doesn't look like Amelia has laid any eggs.
Amelia and Christo perch atop the Christodora building:
You can see more photos and video of this pair over at Urban Hawks.
With so many red-tailed hawks around Tompkins Square recently, it can be difficult to tell them apart. How do we know who is who?
Starting with Christo, he is distinguishable by his shape and coloring. He has a sleek and slender body with a squarish golden-brown head and white throat. His chest is mostly white and he has a light brown belly band. His thighs (not visible in the photo below) have light brown barring. He is the one who perches on the flagpole in the park (no other hawk does that) and he is the one we see most often hunting and catching rats.
Below, Christo is on the left and Dora is on the right. She is larger, with a broader chest and often looks kind of disheveled. She has very 'swishy' feathers in the front that remind me of a 1920s flapper. Her head and wings are a dark chocolate brown and her belly band is darker. Her thighs have no markings on them. Most recently, she's had a drooping left wing that made her easy to identify while perched. Dora's eyes are dark brown.
This is Amelia. While Christo and Dora look quite different from each other, Amelia can easily be mistaken for Christo when they are flying around. She is larger than him and her head is darker than his, but her brown coloring is not as dark as Dora's. She has a distinctive white patch between her eyes and the brown of her head extends down on the sides of her chest. It's not clear in this photo, but she has pronounced golden "eyebrows". Her eye color is a medium brown and you can easily see her pupils. I don't know how old she is, but if Amelia is young, her eye color could darken as she gets older.
Barucha/Nora is a very colorful hawk, with a lot of rusty brown across her chest and along her flanks. She has a thick dark belly band and striking gray "eyeliner" feathers beneath her eyes. She's also a very large hawk. I don't know the exact weights and measurements of all the hawks, but I would say Barucha/Nora appears to be the largest.
In flight, Christo displays a lot of white. His head is light and square, his throat is visibly white, and the tips of his wings don't have much color at all. His body is slim and a bit rectangular.
Dora shows more contrasting colors in flight, with her dark browns being clearly prominent. Her head and belly band are much darker than Christo's and the tips of her wings are dark. Her body is broad and somewhat bulky.
Amelia looks similar to Dora in this photo, but her overall color is lighter. Her belly band is more sparsely colored than Dora's, but her wing coverts are more brown. You can see a light brown barred pattern on her legs.
Barucha/Nora is much more colorful in flight and her wing tips are very dark. This photo doesn't do her justice, but you can really see the reds in her body as she flies.
At this time, Dora is being cared for at WINORR, so she is not in the neighborhood. I'm not sure where Barucha/Nora is, but I suspect she is still on the Lower East Side. I hope to find out more about her whereabouts.
At the time, Christo was perched on the roof of the Christodora building, so he could no doubt see both hawks and knew what was going on. I know a lot of people are upset about this, but if I put myself in Christo's shoes (talons?), he would have been seeing his longtime, but weakened, mate being taken out of the territory. He also would have seen a fully capable female taking care of his nest, the most important thing in his life right now. As it's the height of breeding season, the hawks are running on hormones that direct them to build a nest, breed and take care of eggs. The first time I saw Christo mating this season was with Nora/Barucha on February 4. He's been going at it several times a day for over two months! I'm sure he'd like this process to move into the next phase.
After Dora left the park on Wednesday, I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to get a good look at the new female. Here's the first glimpse of her:
Late in the afternoon, Christo gave her a rat, which she flew around with for several minutes, looking for a place to land and eat.
Wednesday afternoon, the winds really kicked up. With gusts around 50 MPH, the new hawk demonstrated some stunning aerial maneuvers. For this reason, a fellow hawk-watcher suggested calling the new girl "Amelia" after Amelia Earhart.
You can call the hawkswhat ever you want - there are no laws or rules or official forms that need to be filled out - but for this blog, I will refer to her as "Amelia" as I think it's a nice name and it suits her.
The following day, Thursday, Christo and Amelia spent a lot of time flying around and working on the nest. This is Christo peeling bark from a tree.
The hawks use the bark to line the inside of the nest.
This is Amelia participating by bringing in a small branch.
Below, Christo chases off an intruding hawk. Both hawks have teamed up to defend the territory against other hawks several times in the last few days.
Below, Amelia is on the left and Christo is on the right. She's larger than him, and I will do a photographic comparison of Christo, Dora, Nora/Barucha and Amelia in the next post.
Last week I was speculating Dora had laid eggs in the nest. All signs suggested she did. However, since the ordeal on April 4, the nest has been left unattended too long too many times for any eggs to be viable. If offspring result from this nest, they will have to come from the new female. She and Christo have been mating and doing everything right, so there is still hope for eggs and chicks this season.
On Saturday, March 31, Dora was restless, flying from tree to tree, and hopping around on fire escapes on E 8th Street.
When she took off, we could see a broken blood feather dangling from her left wing. This was causing some bleeding and probably bothered her, but she was still able to fly.
In the early afternoon, Dora settled down in the nest and was very calm the rest of the day, so we wondered if she could have laid an egg. However, she went to roost that night on a fire escape, so that would indicate no eggs in the nest.
On Sunday, April 1, Dora was again restlessly flying from branch to branch in the trees surrounding the nest.
Christo spent a lot of time with her and they kept on mating, even on the roof of St Brigid's church (on Easter!). Below, Christo is on the left and Dora is on the right.
Dora was up in the nest a lot, but was sitting up on the sides, not hunkered down inside it, as she would do to brood eggs.
The bleeding from the broken feather appeared to have stopped and her flying looked all right. She and Christo spent several hours of the afternoon perched on a Village View building at First Avenue and 4th Street.
I passed through the park Sunday night at 9:40pm and I could see a hawk sitting up in the nest, but couldn't tell if it was Christo or Dora. For the last few weeks, Christo has been in the nest at nightfall to ward off squirrels who keep trying to get into the nest.
Monday morning saw Dora get into a fight with another hawk. I arrived in the park soon afterwards and found her perched low in a cherry tree on the east side of the park. She stayed low for some time and gave us a scare when she teetered on a tiny branch that hung right over the intersection of Avenue B and 9th Street.
The NYC Urban Park Rangers were called in, but by the time they arrived, Dora had flow to a higher tree near the dog run and seemed to be recovering herself.
Later, more mating...
By afternoon, she was back to flying around. In the photo below, you can see the broken feather that was still hanging from her left wing.
Tuesday, April 3 was a miserably wet and cold day. When I arrived in the park at noon, Dora was down in the nest in brooding posture. I was really happy to see that. At 2pm, Christo flew in and he started brooding, so this confirmed in my mind that they had eggs.
Dora flew to the roof of St Brigid's where she took advantage of the rain and had a shower.
After an hour on the roof, Dora flew back to the park and sat low in a tree for the next four hours. Other than looking wet, I couldn't tell how she was feeling. I was glad she was staying still and resting, but also concerned that she hadn't gone back to the nest yet. Christo came out three times to mate with her, but he returned to the nest to brood each time.
At 7:20pm that evening, Dora flew to a fire escape on E 9th Street to roost, which really disappointed me as she should have gone back to the nest. As I'd been following her, I lost track of Christo, so I don't know if he stayed in the nest overnight. It would be unusual for the male to do that, but I've seen him in the nest after dark for several weeks, and he has always been an extraordinary hawk, so it wouldn't surprise me if he did brood eggs overnight. I really don't know, though.
Wednesday morning is when we got the call Dora was low on a gate (below) and the rest of the story of that day can be read in my previous post.
I was hoping to have some happy news about Christo and Dora brooding eggs, but the last few days have seen some drama in Tompkins Square and our beautiful red-tailed Dora has been taken to rehab.
On Tuesday, I went to the park at noon where I saw Dora up in the nest displaying classic brooding behavior. She was down in the nest, tail sticking out, and remained still. At 2pm, Christo flew in and they made a nest exchange, which pretty much confirmed that they were sitting on eggs. Christo took over brooding while Dora flew to the roof at St Brigid's church and rested for about an hour. She also ate some food that had been stashed there.
Dora then flew back into the park, but stayed in the trees rather than returning to the nest. At 4pm, Christo came out of the nest to mate with Dora, then he returned to the nest while she stayed in the trees. They mated again at 4:35pm and 6:25pm. I stayed with Dora until 7:20pm when, instead of returning to the nest to roost, she went to a fire escape on 9th Street. I was extremely disappointed to see this as it meant she was not incubating the eggs. By this time I had lost track of Christo, so it's possible that he stayed on the nest for the night, but it would be very unusual for the male to do that.
This morning (Wednesday), I received a call from a fellow hawk-watcher who said Dora was low on a gate on 9th Street, very close to where she had roosted the night before on the fire escape.
It's not normal for Dora to be this low to the ground, and it was obvious she was having trouble flying.
Dora's original injury from November 2017 had healed. When she was released into the park on February 26, she was in good shape and, since then, she has made a lot of progress and was able to fly up to the 20+ story Village View buildings on First Avenue. However, she suffered some trauma over the last few days including a broken blood feather on her wing, and engaging in a physical fight with another hawk on Monday.
A large crowd of people gathered on 9th Street, which spooked Dora and she tried to fly across the street to the park. Instead, she crashed into a cab, ended up on the sidewalk, then ran through the fence to shelter in the yard at Trinity Church on the corner of Avenue B and 9th Street.
The church was nice enough to clear the yard of people so Dora could rest. While we waited for rescuers to arrive, Dora climbed up a tree.
As Dora was fairly high in the tree, this made catching her difficult. In the video below, Eva from ACC tries to lasso Dora. The rainy weather didn't help either.
After several attempts to nab Dora at Trinity, she managed to fly across the street to the basketball area of Tompkins Square. Despite being fairly low on a fence, she still evaded capture.
After running along the fence to the pool, Dora flew into a tree where I thought she'd be out of reach. However, Eva didn't give up and climbed a wall to try an net her. To make things more complicated, Christo flew in and mated with Dora during the rescue attempt!
Eventually, Dora became tired enough to finally get netted.
Dora's wing is not broken, but Bobby took her into his care to assess her health and give her some rest. Although I was sad to see Dora return to rehab, I am relieved she is in the care of WINORR and trust them to take care of her and do what is best for her.
As Dora was being taken to the car, Christo was watching from atop the Christodora. Then someone noticed a hawk in the nest! I ran over to check it out and, sure enough, another hawk was messing around in Dora's nest. As if that wasn't shocking enough, Christo mated with the new hawk!
!!!!!!
I took photos of the New Girl and confirmed it is NOT Barucha/Nora. I then remembered that, as I'd headed to 9th Street to see Dora this morning, I saw a hawk perched on Village View on First Avenue, and I also saw Christo in the nest a few minutes later. So, was the hawk on Village View this new female waiting to make her move? Was it the same hawk Dora fought on Monday?
I'm certain there were eggs in the nest on Tuesday. It's possible those eggs were left unattended too long and became unviable. If Christo (or the new hawk?) sat on them last night, it's possible they could survive. After what I saw today, I am thinking there could definitely be new eggs for Christo and the new female. Time will tell.
I spent the rest of the day with Christo and the New Girl. I took a lot of photos and will post them once I process them. There has been so much going on, it's hard to keep up.
A big Thank You to Eva from Animal Care & Control who worked tirelessly today to capture Dora.
Thanks also to Ranger Rob, and to Bobby and Cathy Horvath who are again stepping up to help Dora. They care for our NYC wildlife out of the kindness of their hearts and do not receive any type of funding, so please consider making a donation to their efforts.
I've spent the last several days in Tompkins Square with the hawks, so haven't had a chance to go home and process my photos yet. There was some hawk drama in the park today when Dora fought off an intruding red-tail. Details can be found over at EV Grieve. Looking at the photos, I can say the intruding hawk was not Braucha/Nora.
Hawk fights do sometimes happen. Photographer Susan Kirby has photos and video of one such scuffle in Central Park back in December, which you can see here.
This is just a short post to say Dora won the fight and she's doing ok. When I left the park tonight around 7:45pm, she was in the nest and Christo was roosting in a tree. Here she is earlier in the day confronting a squirrel.
