Red-tails of Central Park

New year, easy walk. I took the train in, met a friend, and we spent three hours in the north end of Central Park looking for the park’s longtime red-tails. We found three. You almost always can.

The first bird was on a London Plane by the Pool, eating something I couldn’t identify (pigeon, probably). It let the two of us stand thirty feet away for a long time. City birds seem to have done the math on who is a real threat.

Second bird came off the top of a Beaux-Arts roofline on Central Park West about forty minutes later and circled above us like it was in a movie. I got fifteen seconds with the long lens and no neutral density, which is fine because the pale sky meant I could still freeze wings at 1/3200s.

Third bird was the weirdest — perched on a chain-link fence in the Ramble, three feet off the ground, staring at a squirrel it didn’t get. We watched for fifteen minutes and the squirrel knew exactly where the hawk was and the hawk knew the squirrel knew.

Before leaving we got a bonus American Kestrel screaming from a high tree near the reservoir and a Cooper’s Hawk we might have double-counted as one of the red-tails from far off. Good day in a big park.