For the birds, part II

In a previous post, I mentioned the Red-Tailed Hawks living in and around Washington Square Park.

Yesterday morning, I was out on my bike doing a couple of errands. Returning home by way of Washington Square South, I saw a man with a camera attached to a telescopic lens that must have been at least three feet long and about 10 inches in diameter. Had to be one of the highest-powered lenses I've ever seen. I stopped behind him to see what he was aiming his equipment at. It was one of the hawks, sitting in a nearby tree and quite easily visible to the naked eye. He had a large rodent of some kind, I think a squirrel, which he was in the process of dining on. I stayed to watch, and more onlookers came and joined us, talking and asking one another questions, and taking pictures with their phone cameras. I watched for about fifteen minutes while he finished his meal. It was quite a sight, as he flashed his tail at us, and spread his wings out while positioning himself for better leverage on his prey.

Alas, I didn't have my camera with me. Also the serious photographer was intent on his work and was not answering questions, so I couldn't learn how to find his photos online or in print. But I did find a few blogs and websites dedicated to these hawks (Pip, the female, and Bobby, the male) and others around the city. I have borrowed this shot from the Urban Hawks blog. You can see the prey under his claws in this shot—this is just a mouse, and much smaller than the meal I watched him consume.

Here is another view of Bobby, showing off the feature that gives the species its name.

(photo borrowed from Roger Paw's blog)

This is a really nice shot, with NYU's main building, a.k.a. Hemmerdinger Hall, in the background. That's the big 1895 building that stretches along Washington Square East from Washington Place to Waverly Place. This building replaced NYU's original "Old Main" building, where Walt Whitman had taught poetry. That one was built by prison labor from Sing-Sing, sparking the first labor riot in NYC, the Stonecutters' Riot of 1834. There we have an instance of some un-Civil Disobedience.