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New York's Pale Male and Lola shunned by stork 28 Apr 2005 20:01:40 GMT
Source: Reuters
| By Walker Simon
NEW YORK, April 28 (Reuters) -
The stork has apparently shunned New York's highest-flying celebrity couple -- red-tail hawks Pale Male and Lola -- who are chickless this season in their newly restored perch above Fifth Avenue. The closely-watched birds, who were evicted and then lured back to their home overlooking Central Park in December after a storm of protest, have failed to have hatchlings after a 50-day wait, far past the average incubation period for the breed, the Audubon Society said on Thursday.
"We're sad and a lot of people are going to be disappointed," said E.J. McAdams, Executive Director of the Audubon Society said. Bird-watchers have been atwitter and expectant since Lola starting sitting on her nest, a behavior indicative of incubating eggs, on March 9.
Their mating was front-page news, celebrated as a return to normality after their home life was disrupted by the abrupt removal of their aerie last year. The average incubation period for a red-tail hawk is 28 to 35 days. By now, nearly two months after the eggs were laid, it is improbable that any eggs will hatch.
"It definitely looks like a sad situation because the hatching is 11 days overdue, it was supposed to be on April 16," said Lincoln Karim, who has watched Pale Male's nest for five years and documents the hawk's life on www.palemale.com. But he has not given up hope.
"This hawk has broken every rule," he said. "No other red-tail hawk in this country has built a nest on a building (like Pale Male)." The definitive sign that eggs will not hatch would be when Pale Male and his mate spend at least a day away from the nest, showing they concluded their latest egg-laying and would not produce offspring, he said.
Pale Male and four mates have hatched 23 chicks over a dozen years from their outpost atop the ritzy building, home to celebrities such as Paula Zahn and Mary Tyler Moore. Pale Male's decision to build his penthouse nest 12 stories above Central Park in 1993 made him a local spectacle and the subject of a book and documentary film.
Last Dec. 7, the nest was abruptly removed from its perch after complaints from building residents about falling debris, including gnarled remains of pigeons. The eviction pitted bird-lovers, including Moore, against other residents, including Zahn in a dispute that brought noisy protests from naturalists and intense media attention. The Audubon Society, which said it received messages of concern from as far away as Europe, Jordan and Australia, stepped in and brokered a pre-Christmas deal to restore the roost and satisfy safety concerns.
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