Hawk Season

After the most recent snowstorm I was restless. Even though we had been plowed and shoveled I didn't know where I wanted to go to walk, concerned about slipping and falling. It is a terrible thing when you are so concerned about something like that because you will never go anywhere in winter. Still, I strayed no further than the top of my driveway.

As I listened for what birds might be around in the late afternoon a red-tailed (or redtail) hawk flew overhead. I had no sooner noted that when a second one flew over, heading in the same direction as the first one, towards the woods near the brook and my town's community garden. 

Red-tail hawk (Margo D. Beller)

I'd seen a pair of red-tails a few weeks earlier flying in the same direction in the late afternoon. They didn't fight each other so I wondered if this was a pair flying to a nest, or at the very least to a safe roosting spot to spend the night.

Now I'd seen what was likely the same pair heading to whatever tree they had picked to roost and perhaps build a nest.

According to the bird people at Cornell, red-tails build their nests at the top of tall trees to have a better view of the mammalian pickings below. They will also nest on cliffs and, as the late Marie Winn detailed in her classic "Red-tails in Love," on the window ledges of tall buildings. 

Neither of these birds is as light in color as Pale Male, the protagonist of that book. In fact, they looked more in color like Harold and Maud, the red-tailed hawks I was tracking when I worked in Bergen County. N.J., in 2012.

I had been standing in a parking lot near my office when I noticed a red-tail with nesting materials in its talons flying back and forth to a particular tree. The next day I brought my binoculars and my camera to work so I could see more closely. That's when I saw the second red-tail, whose photo is above. I called them Harold and Maud after the movie characters.

Maud on the nest, 2012 (Margo D. Beller)

I wrote about that nest on April 1, which means I watched the nest building during March. According to the site Wild Bird Watching, these monogamous raptors' mating season runs from late winter to early spring. In courtship, the two circle in the air and clasp talons, a thrilling thing to see. Then the nesting begins.

Unfortunately, my time at that job ended in early May so I don't know if any of the eggs Maud was incubating hatched and how many young there were. Cornell says red-tails have only one brood of anywhere from one to five eggs. The parents are ruthless in defending their territories and picking off squirrels and other mammals - their preferred food though they'll also eat birds - to feed their young.

Red-tails are of low conservation concern, which means there are a lot of them and likely to stay that way. 

A red-tail in the area of the community garden as
seen from my home in February 2025.
(Margo D. Beller)

I hope these two red-tails are successful with their nest, wherever it is. Perhaps when the snow finally melts I'll go looking for it. If I'm lucky maybe they'll show me where it is.

A bird in the bush 3/24/11

Back on May 27, 2012, I rather stupidly deleted the links of many of my older posts -- not understanding why the headlines of the posts were hyperlinked. I've learned a lot since then, such as linking and spacing and captions. 

But when I was trying to find an older post for a newer one, I realized it was time to start republishing the lost posts, and restore the links.  I will be doing this over the next few days, but I am starting with some of the oldest ones.

When Marie Winn wrote about the redtailed hawk nicknamed Pale Male in "Red-Tails In Love" she showcased birding in Central Park, a place that was coming through bad times along with the City of New York.

Central Park couldn't have had better press agents than Marie Winn and Pale Male.


When I got her book from the library I discovered almanac data in the back - what birds have been reported at particular times of year, for instance - and maps of the park. Maps were the key to getting me, and particularly my husband (MH, for short), into the park. I bought the book in paperback and one day MH and I came in from NJ to bird Central Park.

It is a big park, stretching from 59th Street north to 110th Street and from Fifth Ave. on the east to Eighth Ave. on the west. You can walk in anywhere and immediately get lost unless you can keep the tops of the old apartment towers in sight (and sometimes you get lost anyway).
Despite its natural beauty, every single thing in the park - the trees, the rocks, the flowers - were trucked in and placed as per the design of Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux.

About the only things not placed there by man are the birds passing through, drawn by an island of green in the middle of the concrete city after a long flight. Most of those flights are by night, but some birds fly by day. One time MH and I were walking south on 6th Ave. as night was coming on and a black-crowned night-heron was flying north on 6th Ave., obviously headed for some body of water within the park.

We've also found oddities, such as this male wood duck I photographed swimming with the mallards at the Pond in the southern end of the park. Two males spent this past winter here, even when much of the water was iced over.

Marie's book also identified the places where warblers could be found within the wooded area known as the Ramble.

Warblers are a post unto themselves. In spring they flit in the highest parts of the leafing trees or skulk under bushes. Many are brightly colored, having yellow somewhere, and the males look distinctly different from females (not the case in the fall, which presents its own identification challenges).

Warblers bring out the birders in droves, particularly in Central Park. When an unusual warbler shows up in the park, that number goes up exponentially.
A few years ago one of those vistors was a bright yellow bird with a big dark eye and solid gray wings, a prothonotary warbler. When we were in Florida we saw them in the swamps as often as we see white-breasted nuthatches in the backyard. In Central Park it was a big deal.

I don't fly across the country when a rarity is seen but if I am in the area anyway, I'll check it out. A warm spring weekend day was my excuse for the prothonotary.
This one had been seen along the western shore of a body of water known as the Lake, which one passes on the way to one of the entrances to the Ramble. The prothonotary was seen. It was sorta seen. It had just been missed, according to the birding lists. A little golden needle in a big green haystack.

So we weren't expecting much, being new birders. We walked along the water's edge and down to one of the rustic benches. We looked to the north and suddenly the bird flew out of the bushes on the shoreline and onto a rock jutting into the water, almost daring us to take a picture. Of course we had no cameras with us (or even a cellphone with a camera).

Wow, that was easy, MH said. Are they all that easy?

As we now know, no way. But I admit to some pleasure that day when another birder rushed up while we were birding in the Ramble and asked if we'd seen the prothonotary, rushing away when we said we had, and where. He'd sought it for hours. We saw it in minutes.

Sometimes it is better to be lucky than good.

I have a little list 3/20/11

Back on May 27, 2012, I rather stupidly deleted the links of many of my older posts -- not understanding why the headlines of the posts were hyperlinked. I've learned a lot since then, such as linking and spacing and captions. 

But when I was trying to find an older post for a newer one, I realized it was time to start republishing the lost posts, and restore the links.  I will be doing this over the next few days, but I am starting with some of the oldest ones.

When I was growing up in Brooklyn and then living in Queens with my husband, New York's Central Park did not have a good reputation - muggers behind every tree, bicyclists and wallets stolen at gunpoint, homeless men and women sleeping (and doing lord knows what else) on park benches.

That was particularly bad in the 1980s when the city had devastating fiscal problems and police couldn't keep up with simple crime like graffiti on subway cars, much less murder.

Things changed as the economy improved and, for better or worse, Rudy Giuliani became mayor in the early 1990s on a platform of, among other things, fighting crime and encouraging tourism. More police were hired and hit the streets as well as Central Park and, slowly, more people started to feel safe going in there.

In the late 1990s, a Wall Street Journal reporter named Marie Winn collected her writings about a particularly light redtailed hawk who'd improbably made a nest on an upper 5th Avenue building facade facing Central Park. The book was "Red-Tails In Love." It not only put the focus on the redtail nicknamed Pale Male (inspiring two movies and at least one song, by Steve Earle) but on Central Park in general and the birders who'd never stopped going there even during the bad times in particular.

I have never met Marie Winn but she is a wonderful email correspondent. Thanks to her website, http://mariewin.server304.com/index.htm, you can find Central Park nature notes and information about Pale Male's story and her other books.

But what I found most valuable about her site when I first went to it was her publicizing the New York City Bird Report. Unfortunately, the site no longer posts active sightings and is now a historical database. But between 2003 and 2007 it told you what visiting birds were in different New York City parks every day. 

A correspondent to this list was Tom Fiore, also featured in Marie's book, whose detailed reports were a major reason I (and no doubt others) started birding Central Park more often.

When nycbirdreport.com ended active reporting, Marie mentioned other interesting sites including ebirdsnyc (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ebirdsnyc/) and the NY Birding List, part of www.birdingonthe.net, a service that provides lists of bird sightings by state and by rarity.

One recent mention on the New Jersey list, for instance, sent hundreds of birders from across the state and beyond to a small private lake in Washington Township (Bergen County), NJ, for a sight of a rare pinkfooted goose. Based on subsequent list comments, township residents didn't know what hit them when the birders flew into town. Such is the power of the list.

I enjoy reading the lists, and those who wish to subscribe can post their own sightings and comments. These list services are great when you want to bird beyond your backyard, so check them out.

Harold and Maud

When Pale Male, the redtailed hawk made famous in story and song, chose to put a nest on the side of a ritzy Fifth Avenue apartment building on Manhattan island, he made it very easy on birders.

The nest is high on the building and not obscured by trees. It is easily seen by binoculars or scope - or even by eye, if you know where to look - from a bench near the Hans Christian Andersen statue on the east side of Central Park, near the Conservatory Water where kids race model boats.

At this time of year, when Pale Male and his female of the moment - he's lost a few mates over the years - are trying to create or are raising the next generation, the bench draws a big crowd. Those afar can follow their exploits via a number of websites including that of Marie Winn, who wrote the book on Pale Male.

In the wild, redtails and other hawks are not usually so accommodating. The idea is to hide the nest from predators, including people whose idea of a good time is shooting raptors with guns or, in the case of one unfortunate turkey vulture I and others saw flying in central New Jersey, an arrow.

But sometimes the hawks will show you where the nest is, inadvertently, and it is up to those of us given this gift to protect it.

Look closely to see the redtailed hawk on the nest.

That’s why I’m not going to tell you where Harold and Maud (named for the 1971 movie, but without the e in her name) put their nest in Englewood Cliffs, NJ.

I do a lot of walking on my lunch break out of a desire to be outside and exercising in daylight after hours behind the computer in a windowless pit of a room. Before my part of the company moved to the pit, our desks were in a sunnier locale and every so often I would see a redtailed hawk fly over the parking lot in back, sometimes perching in a tree close by.

Being close to the Palisades, the majestic cliffs along the west shore of the Hudson River north of the George Washington Bridge, there is always a good chance of seeing turkey vultures, redtails and peregrine falcons. During fall migration last year there were bald eagles, sharp-shinned and cooper’s hawks and the occasional osprey and great blue heron. All of them were following the Hudson south, using the warm air off the cliffs to stay aloft.

But there is a local raptor population, too. On a recent break I was heading across the parking lot to the back door when a redtail flew over my head and perched on the end of the building. Having only my cellphone camera, I tried to get closer for a picture. Just as I was about in the right place another redtail flew into a tree across the lot and this one flew over and they mated for a few seconds, then flew off separately.

I wonder if there’s a nest somewhere close by, I thought.

I put it out of my mind until a week later when I was on another walk across the lot and a redtail flew over. That made me wonder where the nest was.

There are limited choices thanks to being such a built-up area where trees are cut down in favor of bigger houses, highways and office parks and what's left over has to be "preserved." There's a small bit of woods to the north, a smaller bit of woods to the west and the woods left as a border on either side of the Palisades Interstate Parkway, which was built atop the cliffs and runs into New York. To the south you’re heading to the busy Englewood Cliffs-Fort Lee-George Washington Bridge area.

For some reason, intuition perhaps?, I started looking at the trees to the west, from a corporate parking lot. Just as I found a suitable candidate the female hawk landed in it, the male landed on her, they noisily mated for a few seconds and then the male flew to the tree next to me and preened over my head!

It is an amazingly public nest but the public doesn’t notice. The next day I looked at the nest from another vantage point on a street and watched as people biked, walked or jogged under it, not noticing the nest or the hawks flying around. Most people don’t. If they see something they may briefly wonder what it is and then go back to their own earthbound lives.

One of the hawks circled high overhead, then swooped down and landed in a tree not particularly close to the nest. I knew it could see me - redtails have excellent vision, much better than humans, to snag squirrels and other things on the ground from a high perch - and wasn’t going to tip me off to the nest. So I walked on and made my way down the street and came back to my original vantage point in the parking lot. I noted the best place to stand, knowing I would later be taking some pictures, including the one above, with my telephoto lens.

Each day I have stopped to look for a few minutes during my break, staying just long enough to find the nest and see what's happening. Each time one of the redtails has been in the nest, which means there are eggs to keep warm. Hunkered down in the nest I can't tell if it's Harold or Maud because they take turns incubating and it is only when they fly that you see the female is bigger than the male to accommodate those eggs she'll be laying.

I don’t know if I will be able to see the miracle of several redtailed hawk chicks peering over the edge of the nest or watch them fledge. At some point the trees will leaf out and obscure them.

I can only hope the nest isn’t blown down, the tree isn’t cut down or the chicks don’t fall down. I hope I am not noticed in my vigil in these days when standing with binoculars in a parking lot is looked on with suspicion by Security. In any event I don't stay long. I don't trust people when it comes to nature. Most are too selfish, too inclined to do what they want, when they want and not give a damn about the consequences to others. That behavior runs the gamut from sterile landscape plantings to cutting down healthy but apparently inconvenient trees to overdoing the pesticides to putting the cat out at night.

It's not like Pale Male up there on his building ledge with his loyal, devoted fan club. Still, I find the experience of watching Harold and Maud just as thrilling.

A bird in the bush

When Marie Winn wrote about the redtailed hawk nicknamed Pale Male in "Red-Tails In Love" she showcased birding in Central Park, a place that was coming through bad times along with the City of New York.

Central Park couldn't have had better press agents than Marie Winn and Pale Male.

When I got her book from the library I discovered almanac data in the back - what birds have been reported at particular times of year, for instance - and maps of the park. Maps were the key to getting me, and particularly my husband (MH, for short), into the park. I bought the book in paperback and one day MH and I came in from NJ to bird Central Park.

It is a big park, stretching from 59th Street north to 110th Street and from Fifth Ave. on the east to Eighth Ave. on the west. You can walk in anywhere and immediately get lost unless you can keep the tops of the old apartment towers in sight (and sometimes you get lost anyway). Despite its natural beauty, every single thing in the park - the trees, the rocks, the flowers - were trucked in and placed as per the design of Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux.

About the only things not placed there by man are the birds passing through, drawn by an island of green in the middle of the concrete city after a long flight. Most of those flights are by night, but some birds fly by day. One time MH and I were walking south on 6th Ave. as night was coming on and a black-crowned night-heron was flying north on 6th Ave., obviously headed for some body of water within the park.

We've also found oddities, such as this male wood duck I photographed swimming with the mallards at the Pond in the southern end of the park. Two males spent this past winter here, even when much of the water was iced over.

Marie's book also identified the places where warblers could be found within the wooded area known as the Ramble.

Warblers are a post unto themselves. In spring they flit in the highest parts of the leafing trees or skulk under bushes. Many are brightly colored, having yellow somewhere, and the males look distinctly different from females (not the case in the fall, which presents its own identification challenges).

Warblers bring out the birders in droves, particularly in Central Park. When an unusual warbler shows up in the park, that number goes up exponentially.

A few years ago one of those vistors was a bright yellow bird with a big dark eye and solid gray wings, a prothonotary warbler. When we were in Florida we saw them in the swamps as often as we see white-breasted nuthatches in the backyard. In Central Park it was a big deal.

I don't fly across the country when a rarity is seen but if I am in the area anyway, I'll check it out. A warm spring weekend day was my excuse for the prothonotary.

This one had been seen along the western shore of a body of water known as the Lake, which one passes on the way to one of the entrances to the Ramble. The prothonotary was seen. It was sorta seen. It had just been missed, according to the birding lists. A little golden needle in a big green haystack.

So we weren't expecting much, being new birders. We walked along the water's edge and down to one of the rustic benches. We looked to the north and suddenly the bird flew out of the bushes on the shoreline and onto a rock jutting into the water, almost daring us to take a picture. Of course we had no cameras with us (or even a cellphone with a camera).

Wow, that was easy, MH said. Are they all that easy?

As we now know, no way. But I admit to some pleasure that day when another birder rushed up while we were birding in the Ramble and asked if we'd seen the prothonotary, rushing away when we said we had, and where. He'd sought it for hours. We saw it in minutes.

Sometimes it is better to be lucky than good.

What was your easiest bird sighting? Let me know at bellerbirder@gmail.com

I have a little list

When I was growing up in Brooklyn and then living in Queens with my husband, New York's Central Park did not have a good reputation - muggers behind every tree, bicyclists and wallets stolen at gunpoint, homeless men and women sleeping (and doing lord knows what else) on park benches.

That was particularly bad in the 1980s when the city had devastating fiscal problems and police couldn't keep up with simple crime like graffiti on subway cars, much less murder.

Things changed as the economy improved and, for better or worse, Rudy Giuliani became mayor in the early 1990s on a platform of, among other things, fighting crime and encouraging tourism. More police were hired and hit the streets as well as Central Park and, slowly, more people started to feel safe going in there.

In the late 1990s, a Wall Street Journal reporter named Marie Winn collected her writings about a particularly light redtailed hawk who'd improbably made a nest on an upper 5th Avenue building facade facing Central Park. The book was "Red-Tails In Love." It not only put the focus on the redtail nicknamed Pale Male (inspiring two movies and at least one song, by Steve Earle) but on Central Park in general and the birders who'd never stopped going there even during the bad times in particular.

I have never met Marie Winn but she is a wonderful email correspondent. Thanks to her website, http://mariewin.server304.com/index.htm, you can find Central Park nature notes and information about Pale Male's story and her other books.

But what I found most valuable about her site when I first went to it was her publicizing the New York City Bird Report. Unfortunately, the site no longer posts active sightings and is now a historical database. But between 2003 and 2007 it told you what visiting birds were in different New York City parks every day.

A correspondent to this list was Tom Fiore, also featured in Marie's book, whose detailed reports were a major reason I (and no doubt others) started birding Central Park more often.

When nycbirdreport.com ended active reporting, Marie mentioned other interesting sites including ebirdsnyc (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ebirdsnyc/) and the NY Birding List, part of www.birdingonthe.net, a service that provides lists of bird sightings by state and by rarity.

One recent mention on the New Jersey list, for instance, sent hundreds of birders from across the state and beyond to a small private lake in Washington Township (Bergen County), NJ, for a sight of a rare pinkfooted goose. Based on subsequent list comments, township residents didn't know what hit them when the birders flew into town. Such is the power of the list.

I enjoy reading the lists, and those who wish to subscribe can post their own sightings and comments. These list services are great when you want to bird beyond your backyard, so check them out.