Landing at the nest is Lola, and standing by is Pale Male. They are hawks. They watch over three of the 25 chicks they raised over a period of nine years.
They lived on the ledge of a Fifth Avenue building near Central Park. "Lived" is past tense, as yesterday the building's management decided that the nest should be removed as a "safety precaution". They waited until there were no chicks and a kind of inactive pair of birds, and when the birds were away they took the nest down.
And here Pale Male went to such trouble to build it, retrieving sticks from the park... and enriching the lives of everyone who saw the birds. Presently they have a very unhappy pair of hawks, milling about complaining, and wondering whether they should build nearby or just move out of the city like all the other middle-aged parents. Can the burbs provide enough to interest your basic hawk? Maybe Hoboken or the Island would be a compromise.
And they also have humans milling about complaining, wondering why the building had to do this.
Pale Male: what a beautiful bird.
The hawks' home page - palemale.com
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