One of the joys of birding in Central Park is that will all of the great birds, come great bird watchers who find rare things.  Today's great find was a Silver-haired Bat that must have been disturbed during the day and ended up sitting on a sawdust covered log in the Tupelo Meadow.

At first the bat looked like it might have died, with no sign of life.  But as it got darker, the bat became more and more active, until it flew off into the dim light of dusk.

Randalls Island has had a nest in the lights of Field 10 just north of Icahn Stadium for a number of years.  When there were Peregrine Falcons on the hospital, I think we skipped a year, but otherwise the pair has breed consistently over the last few years.

This year was no exception.  The female was on the nest and in the warm sun left the eggs for a few minutes to take a stretch.

The Upper East Side female and her new mate have returned to the nest she used three years ago at 10oth and Third Avenue.  (Many of you may remember her from her nest last year at 96th and Lexington, where she lost her mate and had a fledgling with frounce.  They year before that, the pair tried to nest at 95th and Lexington.)

When they moved, two new apartment buildings were being built on Third Avenue.  I wonder if now, with the construction long completed, the female felt comfortable returning to Third Avenue.

In the middle of the afternoon, I got to see the male of the 350 Central Park West nest give the female a nest a break from incubation duties.  It was 45 seconds of excitement after an hour of watching the female sit on the nest!

Birding in other areas of the park made up for the hours wait.  Spring migration is finally started and new species are arriving daily and general number are higher too.  I had three new species for the year, Great Egret, Black-crowned Night-Heron and Golden-crowned Kinglet.

Good news since the last update. 

• It has been confirmed by someone with a view from across the street of the Crown Building at 730 Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, has a nest.
• The 96th and Lexington female and her new mate have returned to 1802 Third Avenue on the 5th Floor of the fire escape.
• Inwood Hill Park has eggs.
• 350 Central Park West has eggs.
• Randalls Island has eggs.

We still need reports for some of the nests, and certainly are missing nest in upper Manhattan.  So emails are welcome.

A Northern Saw-when Owl was in Central Park today.  It may be an owl that over wintered in the park or a migrant.  I was surprised to see one so late in the year.  But I looked up the frequency of Northern Saw-when Owl sighting over the last twenty year in Manhattan on eBird.org, I discovered Northern Saw-when Owls are seen until mid-April, with late March being a peak period for sightings.

I caught up with the adults of the 350 Central Park West nest this afternoon.  The female was sitting on the nest and the male was soaring above The Pond. 

The female at 350 Central Park West has started sitting on the nest.  I would suspect that there is a single egg with one or two still to be laid over the next few days.  The male stayed in two trees across from 350 CPW while I was watching the nest.  This is the fifth confirmed nest for the year in Manhattan.

It was very windy so the video has some very shaky patches.  I included them just to demonstrate she was clearly on the nest.

I arrived just at the right time to see the Washington Square pair fly off together and then copulate before the female returned to the nest to continue incubating her eggs.  There are currently two eggs in the nest, with the possibility of one more in the next day or two.

My post about brooding nests yielded news that the Inwood Hill Park nest started brooding on Sunday.  So, that makes the fourth confirmed, active nest of the season. 

I went up to 350 Central Park West to see if they were brooding yet, but it looks like they haven't yet.  They did however copulate over the playground at 96th/97th.

Three nests in Manhattan have been confirmed to have brooding hawks so far this year, Washington Square Park, Tompkins Square Park and Fifth Avenue.   This leaves a number of previous nest sites to check over the next few weeks: Inwood Hill Park, Randalls Island, St. John the Divine, 350 Central Park West, and 310 West 72nd Street.  (I've heard good reports about activity at each nest except for Randalls Island and 310 West 72 Street but these are never closely watched.)

This leaves a large amount of northern Manhattan without known nests, including northern Riverside Park, High Bridge Park and Fort Tryon Park.  Also, although the male died at 96th and Lexington and the nest was removed after the building was tagged with graffiti in the fall, may area residents have reported seeing hawks in the area.  The CCNY nest on Shepard Hall lost the male just before nesting season last year, so it is possible that hawks will return to this nest too.

I doubt Manhattan only has eight nests this year.  Let's hope we find the new ones soon!

So this is my preliminary guess at nests for this season and older sites that will need checking:

I made two visits to Fifth Avenue today.  Once in the morning, where things seemed to be like they had for the last few weeks with both hawks escorting out intruders and making brief visits to the nest.  But when I visited this evening, things had changed.  Octavia clearly had started brooding.  She was sitting tight on the nest for the first time this season!

American Woodcocks have been migrating through New York City this past week.  I caught up with one on Saturday in the Ramble of Central Park.  It was doing it's best to stay hidden, which it did an excellent job of doing!

Hawk watchers at Fifth Avenue got to see many nest visits, watch Pale Male chase off a juvenile Red-tail and share food with Octavia over the last few days. We all are looking forward to the 2019 nesting season.

The hawks at 350 Central Park West seem all set of the season.  The nest is in much better shape than last year and looks great.  One of the hawks was on the church at 96th Street for twenty minutes. Then both hawks visited the nest and they then copulated while I was there in the early afternoon today.  The building is excited to have them nesting and seems very protective of them which is great news.

I didn't get much of a chance to watch Pale Male and Octavia that much this weekend.  On Saturday, I caught both of them on the Carlyle Hotel.  On Sunday, I found Pale Male in a tree by the Boathouse parking lot.

What I found strange this weekend was listening to multiple tour guides and folks claiming to be "locals" who seemed stuck in the 2004/2005 period.  They gave lectures to tourists about Pale Male and Lola, talked about celebrities who haven't lived on Fifth Avenue for years, asked if the nest was "new" because they knew the old one had been taken down, and other nonsense. 

The entire time frame of the nest being taken down, including the protests, and the installation of the nest cradle lasted only a few weeks.  That was over fourteen years ago.  Folks, it's time to put away your old copies of Marie Winn's books and Frederic Lilien's DVDs and catch up to the present!  A lot has happened in fourteen years!

I visited the Washington Square Park nest in January and February, but my timing was bad each time and I only saw a few glimpses of the hawks.  I had much better luck today with the female on One Fifth Avenue, with a fly-by by the male who had a rat.  He shared it on the Student Center building and they both made a few visits to the nest.  Then they both went east and I lost track of them over the Law School.  Both they and the nest look great and I expect we'll see eggs in a few weeks.

On Thursday afternoon a young Red-tailed Hawk was eating a squirrel on a rock south of the Azalea Pond in Central Park's Ramble.  It is an interesting bird with one red tail feather.  We usually see the brown tail feathers of a juvenile change one by one over the summer to adult red feathers, so this one red feather is unusual.

Not much has changed over the last few days with Pale Male and Octavia.  The nest is being visited in the afternoons and both Octavia and Pale Male are spending time in the afternoon near the Met.