Red-tailed Hawk updates

Marge just sent me an e-mail regarding Big Mama and Junior in their new digs at Green-Wood Cemetery:

Date: April 9, 2007 5:43:13 PM EDT
Subject: GWC Red-tails
 
I went to the cemetery with my son today to monitor the red-tails. Mama is sitting on the nest. Using the car as a blind is great. I watched [Junior] bring in fresh nesting material and a real cat & mouse type of scenario with a squirrel. [Junior] dropped off the nesting material and immediately  quickly flew right across the top of my car and nearly caught a squirrel. My son was amazed at his speed. The squirrel went off the limb and onto the trunk of the tree and froze there. [Junior] would try to flush him off the trunk. Obviously, the trunk makes it difficult for [him] to attack the squirrel.   [Junior] would just sit on the limb and wait for the squirrel to move so that it made it more advantageous for him to strike. Certainly if it went on the ground or on a limb a kill was inevitable. The squirrel kept moving around the trunk and [Junior] kept hopping from limb to limb and trying to fly onto the trunk. It was quite the scene to watch. Then I saw him land on the ground, but didn't see him fly away with a squirrel, so I assumed the rodent got away. I did see him return again with more nesting material later on after I left and went to see the owl.
 
Marge

I also received an e-mail from D. Bruce Yolton of "Urban Hawks". Apparently, NYC hawk blogs have proliferated almost as much as the Red-tailed Hawks. He informed me of another annual nesting pair in Queens. There is a wonderful story about "Mama" and "Papa" on the NYC Audubon website. Jeff Kollbrunner has a great website with regular updates on this Briarwood, Queens pair.

-Check out his incredible live nestcam-