It's a hard life being a bird

It's nesting season, and woodpeckers are among the busy birds in Central Park. The the end of May I spotted the female Downy Woodpecker excavating a willow tree at the east end of Turtle Pond.

Downys nested there a couple of years back, too. I think the tree is pretty rotten at this point, so the wood is soft enough for a little beak like a Downy's to dig in. The limb she was working on extended over the water, and I watched sawdust float down to the surface of the pond as she worked.

The male took part in the digging, too. I don't remember that from last time. The hole got quickly deeper over the next few days, with more and more of the bird disappearing into it as it worked

Finally I saw the female disappear into the nest hole, and then poke her head out. That was about the fourth of June. I figured she must have laid eggs then, and they'd probably hatch about mid-month.

A week later, I noticed that the area of the hole looked different, as if more excavation had been done. And I didn't see the birds, though I could hear the whinnying call of a Downy occasionally on the south side of the pond. Maybe they were mostly keeping in the nest, on the eggs.

Unfortunately, no. The next day I saw a gang of about five juvenile Starlings poking around the hole. They or their elders must have raided the nest. Starlings are also cavity-nesters, and they're tough birds that are hard to compete with.

In the Ramble, there was a pair of Northern Flickers nesting near the bend in the Gill. When I saw them, the female was in the nest hole, and the male was calling from somewhere nearby. I was told that she had been coming out frequently and they'd been seen mating, but now she was staying in the hole. Possibly she was on eggs already.

Alas, once again, a couple of days later Starlings were seen in the nest hole, having evicted the Flickers.

Meanwhile, uptown, the nest of Red-Tailed Hawks at Grant's Tomb ran into some problems. Around the time the young were fledging, the male hawk apparently flew into a window hard enough to break it, and has not been seen since. Then the mother hawk lost an argument with a car and was taken to a rehabber where it was discovered to have some problems from ingesting rat poison. That left three fledglings with nobody to feed them, but mobile enough to be hard to catch; eventually they were caught and brought to rehab centers.

There's a series of posts about the Grant's Tomb nest at the Urban Hawks Blog, June 10, June 11, and June 14; and at the Morningside Hawks blog (I hadn't know about that one before!) on June 10, June 13, June 14, and June 17.

I hear the female has actually been released now, but not the fledglings yet--a single parent would have some trouble feeding three fledglings who can't hunt yet. The young birds are losing important time in learning to hunt.

It's a hard life, being a bird.

Kingbird vs Hawk

Earlier in the summer, soon after the young Red-Tailed Hawks from Pale Male's brood had fledged, I spotted one of them in a tree along the 79th Street Transverse. It called occasionally, a creaky version of an adult hawk's scream. As I drew nearer, I realized that the young hawk was being mobbed by a single Eastern Kingbird, who I knew was nesting nearby.

This is the only time I've seen the red crown on a Kingbird. It's usually hidden, but this was one angry bird.

The Kingbird made pass after pass at the hawk, sometimes going away for a few minutes then returning again. On every close approach, teh hawk would screech.

The Kingbird was actually striking the hawk occasionally, though I didn't manage the catch that in camera.

The hawk eventually decided he'd has enough, and flew off. The Kingbird's young fledged a couple of weeks later, and you'd see the parents feeding them around Turtle Pond.

Nesting season (part 1)

The Heron Is In

It's nesting season! Out on Governors Island, the Yellow-Crowned Night Herons have returned. The nest they used last year was destroyed somehow during the winter, so they relocated to near the Harbor School. These photos were taken near the end of June I wonder if they've got hatchlings yet.

time for a stretch and a scratch

The Common Terns seemed to be doing well; their nest colony isn't in plain view at their new location (their half of Yankee Pier collapsed during the winter and they're now on Tango Pier, which is entirely closed to people) but I could see one fledgling on the pier. Too far for a decent photo, though.

Some birds have fledged their young already (at least their first round, many will renest). Here's a baby Cardinal from Central Park:

the dark beak is a sign of youth in a Cardinal

and a recently fledged Blue Jay:

yelling for food

and the Common Grackles have had a good year so far:

time to feed the baby

kids are so demanding

More soon.

Nesting season notes

In early Summer, the migration is over, and the main points of interest are the nesting birds. There are twenty or so species nesting in Central Park. In early June, my attention was held by the Warbling Vireo nest I mentioned in an earlier post.

That's one of the probably three nestlings getting what looks like a whole moth all his own, just a couple of days before they fledged. They did it on a weekend I was away, and a week before I thought it would happen. The nest must have been there well before I first saw it.

Right after the Vireos, I noticed a Baltimore Oriole nest near the bathrooms in the Ramble.

This photo, too, was only a day or so before fledging. I don't know how I missed this very obvious nest right over the path, but I didn't see it until I was standing under another tree nearby and Mama Oriole came out and scolded me.

She didn't like anyone anywhere near her nest tree.

One species that has had a hard time nesting in the Park lately is the Canada Goose. The Central Park Conservancy has been on a goose eradication campaign for some years, which has included paying "experts" to go and oil or break eggs and destroy nests.

Despite the efforts of the Goosestapo, one or two pairs do manage to breed every year. I found these lazy half-grown goslings hanging out at the edge of the Reservoir the other week.

On the other hand, everybody loves ducklings. Remember the gang of young Mallards at Turtle Pond that I posted a photo of some time back? They're growing into fine young ducks.

At least the survivors are, anyway. There were ten originally, and it looks like four have been taken by predators. But not to worry, right after I took this picture, I saw this:

That's ten more Mallard ducklings and another busy mama duck.

Elsewhere, the various Red-Tailed Hawk nests have fledged, Ben Cacace reports that the Yellow-Crowned Night Heron on Governor's island has thatched, and I see from photos online that the young Common Terns are doing well.