Sunday, June 24, 2007

Baby update

Baby 1. Astoria Park Fledgling the First:

Jules Corkery e-mailed this morning:
Marie! One of the babies fledged the Astoria Park [Triborough Bridge] nest!
Bruce Yolton gives more details on his blog:
The Astoria Park nest had its first fledge on Saturday 6/23/07 [that's YESTERDAY] around 2 p.m. The fledgling went to the equipment depot under the bridge near the nest. It was the safest place to fledge. Good choice young one.

Baby 2. 888 7th Ave Fledgling - now in Central Park - photo 6/22/07

Bruce Yolton has been photographing Junior & Charlotte and their back-in-the-fold fledgling every day since the baby hawk was brought back to the park on Tuesday 6/19/07. Great photos on his website - http://www.urbanhawks.blogs.com

On 6/22 Bruce took the picture above near the Heckscher Ballfields and captioned it:
She was eating next to a Baseball dugout, and the team playing in Red uniforms were named the Hawks!

Baby 3.
Ten-week-old fledgling , one of two - photo: J. Kollbrunner

Jeff Kollbrunner writes of the Briarwood family [the ones that were on the Audubon webcam]:

Our fledglings are now in their tenth week and doing very well. They are both very strong in flight and practicing their hunting skills routinely. They practice hunting squirrels, rats, plastic cups, broken branches laying on the ground and the occasional newspaper blowing in the breeze.
Today our first fledgling nearly captured its first squirrel. Swooping very low to the ground rapidly from behind the young hawk tossed it talons at the squirrel. It got enough of the squirrel to flip it completely over. As the young hawk made an abrupt sharp turn for a second chance, the squirrel quickly managed to get into a nearby tree for cover.