The Grant's Tomb Fledglings, Continued

Part 2 of The Grant's Tomb Fledglings features some playground action, some rain and two siblings waiting for food in a tree!

A Grant's Tomb fledgling at the Claremont Playground, June 23, 2017.

Part 2 was filmed on June 23 and 24, at the Claremont Playground, which is north of monument. It is a fun place to play for kids and baby hawks!

I loved when the young hawk perched under the hawk weather vane on top of the restroom building.

More playground photos from June 23. The youngster didn't seem all that happy when it started to rain, although the kid had played earlier in the sprinklers. The last photo in this group was taken June 24.

These two siblings were waiting for a food delivery on June 24.

You know these are urban hawks when they sit on park benches. These shots are from June 24.

Stay tuned for Part 3! These young birds delight me every day!

Chasing the Grant's Tomb Fledglings

The Grant's Tomb nest this year hatched three young red-tailed hawks, which have fledged and are delighting everyone in the neighborhood. I've been filming them as they go from crying on the back of the Grant's Tomb monument to hunting bugs at the Claremont Playground to the north. More photos and video will follow!

One of the three Grant's Tomb fledglings, June 21, 2017.

The Chasing the Hawks videos are being doing in parts. I just posted Part 1 of The Grant's Tomb Fledglings, which covers June 13, 16 and 21.

The first seven photos below were taken June 13. The fifth shows a parent (I think Mom) bringing in a pigeon, which she then took to the ledge of the monument, where the kids ate one after the other. The eighth photo was taken June 16, and shows a balcony with a potted red-tailed fledgling.

These photos were taken June 21. Mom brought a pigeon to a tree. One of the kids started eating it there, while another watched and cried. The fledgling with the food carried it to the ground, where the meal was devoured. Sharing is not considered a hawk attribute.

Purple Monster? No! Purple Martins!

Usually, on this site, PM stands for Purple Monster, our Christmas heroine. But today, PM stands for purple martins (Progne subis), those broad-chested swallows that do aerial acrobatics to catch insects. There is only one sanctuary nesting colony in New York City where you can see purple martins: Lemon Creek Park on Staten Island. The purple martins are very welcome there, with high-rise apartments and gourd single-family dwellings. I visited on June 20, traveling on the Staten Island Ferry and the Staten Island Railroad. 

Purple martin, Lemon Creek Park, Staten Island, June 20

The Filming the Feathers video shows the purple martins at their nests and on a phone line. You'll notice some wooden decoy purple martins in the video and in a photo below. Purple martins love to be in flocks, and the wooden birds welcome visiting swallows to the neighborhood. On the day I visited, I also saw starlings and house sparrows taking up residence in the condominiums.

The first photo below shows one of the wooden decoys. The rest are resident purple martins. All photos were taken June 20.