Fordham hawk update

Here's yesterday's update from Christopher in the Bronx.


Hawkeye (click image to enlarge)

(Photo credit - Christopher Lyons)

Rose inspecting the nest (click image to enlarge)

(Photo credit - Christopher Lyons)

From: Christopher Lyons
Date: May 1, 2007 10:55:19 PM EDT
Subject: Hawkeye & Rose photos, and I THINK I saw a chick today

I staked out the nest at Collins Hall today (Tuesday, 5/1) between 12-1pm, and then again from 2:30-3:15pm, and saw a fair bit of activity. Neither adult spent any time engaged in what could be considered incubation. First Rose showed up and looked into the nest, then flew off. Then Hawkeye flew in to check. Then Rose returned, and sat at the top of the nest, not settling down into it. She did a bit of preening and left again. After she'd gone, I'm pretty sure I saw a small pale object moving around in the nest, but the view was obscured by sticks, and the photos I took didn't capture what I saw. Nonetheless, I'm sure I saw something. I feel pretty confident that something was a very young Red-Tail eyass. 

I won't be able to check the nest again until Monday, so hopefully during my absence Rich Fleisher can definitively document the presence of chicks again, as he did last year--he told me yesterday that it was actually on May 2nd or 3rd that he took his first photos of a Collins Hall eyass. They're clearly on a very similar schedule to last year.

I actually like a lot of the pictures I got today, grainy though some of them may be. I just wish one of them was of a chick. Little bugger caught me offguard, but hard to focus on him through all those sticks anyway.

So if that eyass I'm 99.999% sure I saw today had just climbed up on top of those sticks, instead of clambering around behind them, I'd have totally nailed him. Sneaky little brat.  ;)