March 19, 2010

Woodside Nest 3-19-10

Today was the first day the Woodside RTH pair returned to work on their new nest since last Thursday(3-11-10). They may be working on several nests at one time, which is causing delays in finalizing one nest. They have not been seen back at the Woodside Projects in over a week, so it looks like that nest is out for this year. I had planned to visit the Unisphere nest this morning, but decided to see if the Woodside pair had made a definitive decision on one nest. When I arrived at the nest spot the female (I promise to name them soon!) was sitting motionless at the back of the fire escape.  I started to wonder if she had already laid eggs and was sitting on them.


At this point there is no real "nest", it's really just a pile of twigs.


So unless they are that far behind in nest building and she is desperate to get the eggs out of her womb, its unlikely that eggs have been laid yet. I decided at that point to stick around for the day and see what would develop.

After a few minutes she got up and began assembling some sticks around the nest, then headed towards some Sweet Gum trees to acquire more twigs. I decided to take a few pics to make sure there were no eggs on the fire escape, and thankfully there weren't. I watched her go back and forth gathering twigs for at least half an hour before she decided to take a break.


As I watched her perched on the fire escape, her mate appeared from above the building and landed right next to her.

 (Female on the left)

After a few seconds together, they decided to copulate.


After mating, they separated and perched near each other for a few moments before taking off to find a meal. They did not return to the nest for the rest of the day as far as I could tell, so I'll have to wait till tomorrow to see if they return and continue work on this nest.

3 comments:

Robert said...

Note the light eyes. The male looks pretty young.

Queens Raptors said...

Hey Rob,

I've heard rumors about this male, but can't find any hard evidence of how he came to Woodside or how old he was when released. I was told he was released in the nearby Calvary Cemetery to alleviate the rodent/squirrel population, and that the DEC was involved in him being released(supposedly in 2007).

Robert said...

His eyes look light enough that I have to think that he is likely a different hawk. A hawk released n 2007 would be 4 years old now, and it'd expect the eyes to be darker if it that was hawk.