Hawk Updates

I just received word from Jeff Kollbrunner that the Briarwood, Queens Red-tailed Hawk has successfully fledged:

Date: June 5, 2009 12:29:46 AM
Subject: Briarwood Fledge

The Briarwood Queens eyass has safely fledged on June 3rd between 2pm and 6:30pm. I wanted to confirm the fledge before posting this update. This morning I was able to confirm with a rooftop visit to the nest that the nest is empty. It took about 30 minutes to find the parents this morning and a couple more hours to find the fledgling. It's doing fine on some six story apartment building rooftops to the East of its nest. It's flight appears to be strong and its landing skills very coordinated for the first full day out of the nest. Thankfully, the significant amount of razor wire and the busy Expressway in the immediate fly-out path of the nest didn't become a problem.

You can check out Jeff's hawk photo page here.

Yesterday morning I paid a visit to Nelly and Max's nest in Prospect Park. The young are very large and look as if they should fledge this weekend. If you can get over to Nelly's Lawn, there's a good chance you'll see at least one of the young Red-tailed Hawks outside of the nest. Here's a short video I made of the three eyasses taking turns flap-hopping. Sorry about the shaky-cam effect, I didn't have my tripod so I had to hand hold the camera.

I had a similar experience at the Green-Wood Cemetery nest later in the afternoon. The two young hawks are very large, active and look ready to fledge. They will, in all likelihood, leave the nest this weekend. While I was monitoring the nest, Junior flew in with food twice within the span of about 10 minutes. His offspring are huge thanks to his attention and an abundance of prey. If you can't make it over to Prospect Park, Green-Wood Cemetery would be a good second choice to look from fledging Red-tailed Hawks this weekend.