Thursday, February 11, 2010

Snow in Inwood

Here's "Appie", a Ring-billed Gull with an auxiliary marker (APP) photographed today in a little bay on the East River at Inwood Hill Park, in northern Manhattan. I reported it to the Patuxent Wildlife Center, and will let you know when I hear back from them where this bird was banded.

Snow all day yesterday and blue skies today made for a photogenic walk in the park this morning. It may not be obvious, but this is in Manhattan!

As everybody knows, these days you can see many raptors of various species in New York City. There's Peregrine Falcons on the city's bridges and skyscrapers, American Kestrels all over the city (saw one on 14th St between 6th and 7th Ave today), sometimes in winter a Bald Eagle over the Hudson, several Cooper's Hawks in various city parks, and of course the resident Red-tailed Hawks. Pale Male is only the most famous, certainly not the only, redtail breeding in the city. For years, Inwood Hill Park has had a breeding pair, and this morning one of these birds perched briefly in a tree overhead. As real urbanites, they have become so habituated to humans that they can be approached quite closely.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

hmmm… “a” breeding pair of red-tails in Inwood Park? year round? and this photo is one of the pair? (with its straw colored eye and barred tail?)

johnvandort said...

Thanks for your comment, Anon. The bird in the photo is, as you pointed out, an immature. What I meant to say was that you can find redtails in Inwood Hill Park year-round. Back in February, there was a lot of calling and displaying going on, which led me to assume that redtails breed there. I've never found a nest there but I haven't spent much time looking.

johnvandort said...

"Appie", the Ring-billed Gull with an auxiliary marker APP, was banded on 23 April 2009 in Ile de Laurier, NR Varennes, Quebec, Canada. This is a small river island on the outskirts of Montreal.