Little Naturalists: Tragedy for Red Tailed Hawks
Submitted by Anna Fader on
Mom in New Nest
This year, as Mother’s Day dawned I awoke with a sense of anxiety. The red-tail hawk babies had not been seen in the nest for 2 days. I received email after email Saturday afternoon and evening from hawk-watching friends that the parents were bringing food into the nest, but no little white heads popped up; no perfect little hawk-shaped beaks opened. I emailed my friends Lincoln Karim and Beth Bergman, both professional photographers and passionate hawk and nature watchers, saying that I would run to the nest early Sunday morning. At 7am I raced out of the boat with my binoculars and up to Riverside Park to the nest tree, a honey locust standing along the on-ramp to the northbound West Side Highway. There I ran into Cal Vornberger, a renowned urban wildlife photographer (The Birds of Central Park). Together we looked up and saw the mother hawk but no babies.