The girls and I went to Cornell yesterday morning with the awareness that it would probably be fledge day for the final eyass. As it turned out, the chick did fledge, but not till later in the day. It was chilly and overcast during the two hours we waited at the nest site, and though we did see all three chicks, there wasn’t a lot going on.

For a tenth of what my parking ticket cost last week, I purchased a two-hour visitor permit, and during that time the girls and I enjoyed meeting a few other folks from the hawk chat. Almost everyone who drove, biked, or walked past did so while craning their necks, looking up at the tower. Everyone seemed aware of C3; one young woman who passed by said that she walked by every day on her way to work. “I think about how amazing it would be if the third one jumped off and flew while I was on my way past!” she said.

The chick’s first flight was marvelous, and probably the first intentional fledge of the three. The first two appeared to fledge by accident, blown from their perches by a breeze, but this one took off like a pro. I wasn’t watching at the time, so I was glad for this video capture.

Best of luck to you, C3!

My parking permit ran out around 1:00, just as the sun was starting to break through. So we ate our bag lunches and then drove around for awhile, visiting some sites of interest to us raptor geeks.

One was a large pheasant farm to the Northeast of the nest. Someone told me that it produces pretty much all of the pheasants in the state, and when it was proposed recently that funding be cut because of the state’s economic woes, there was quite a protest.

However, it’s not only humans who appreciate the pheasant farm. There were flocks of pigeons, crows, and blackbirds there, pilfering the feed (or so we guessed). One turkey vulture visited, for some mysterious reason. I’ve heard that they frequent natural gas lines because of the smell of decay. I doubt that there were any dead pheasants around; it’s to all appearances a very well-maintained farm. But maybe there was some other explanation.

A pheasant would be too heavy for a hawk to carry away in most cases. But the pigeons and, likely, small rodents attracted by the feed must in turn attract hawks, because there was a pair of redtails there.

Just to the southeast is a long field of utility poles. The southern end of the field is visible sometimes when the cam pans the landscape near the cemetery where Ezra is thought to hunt. Back in April, we observed a pair of redtails actually mating atop one of the poles. They were there again yesterday.

Was this one pair of hawks, or two? Was the pair monitoring the pheasant farm Red and Ezra? We could only be at one place at a time, but we can say for sure that there is at least one other pair of redtails in Big Red and Ezra’s near neighborhood, and perhaps two. The utility field hawks look enough like Red and Ezra to be twins, but they’re definitely different hawks based on what we observed back in April.

It was interesting to get a slightly expanded sense of the hawk neighborhood. Watching the cams, it’s easy to develop tunnel vision, but the hawks live in a place full of raptor-friendly habitat. I’m sure they all have their invisible but well-defended “property lines” and the place will be full of young hawks learning to fly and hunt this summer.

Probably not everyone is excited about this!

I wanted to share a few last photos of our Cornell trip yesterday.

Twice now, when we’ve visited the hawks, Red has spent some time perched on a ledge of the building across the street from the nest. She enjoyed the sun there yesterday before Chick 1 left the nest. Maybe it’s a sauna-type experience for her, surrounded by warm brick.

It’s not necessarily easy to see her there, though — till you step back a bit.

She is such an athlete. I love to see the power when she launches, unfurling all that energy and strength.

She sets a great example for young birds with much to learn about mastering the air. The hawk chicks watched as they practiced their own feats of daring.

While two of the hawklets flapped and considered, the third power-lounged.

Yesterday as we drove home, I had the bittersweet awareness that we won’t be able to follow these young hawks much longer. I think it was a classic empty-nest feeling. Part of me is relieved that I won’t know all the scrapes they get into. But I’ll always wonder how they fared.

I hope that they find the wits and resourcefulness to rise to every challenge.

These hawks have parents who show them how it’s done with grace.

We’ve visited the red-tailed hawks at Cornell a couple of times. Yesterday, we saw them again, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it would be our last time. The hawklets may be flying before we get back!

They’re large enough to see easily from the ground now. We got there in the late afternoon, and over the hour or so that we were there, we saw two of them; the third, we saw on the nest cam, was resting out of our sight.

It was a hot one, and they were panting. (So were we!)

Ezra was on a nearby light pole, keeping an eye on things. Initially we didn’t see Big Red, but after a few minutes we saw her on the nest with the chicks. I’m not sure whether she flew in while our eyes were elsewhere, or whether she just changed position so we could see her better. In any case, she had a mission in mind that involved a short flight.

Obviously I was photographing this in a window through the trees. She flew over Older Daughter and me, and into a small tree about 40 feet from where my husband and Younger Daughter sat on the steps of the building across the street! There she proceeded to rip some home improvements from the tree while a chorus of small birds scolded from the neighboring branches.

She flew back to the nest with her hard-won beakfull of bark. It was hazy, and the light doesn’t bring out her color as much as I’d like, but she is so amazing in flight — beautifully marked and powerful.

Back at the nest, she deposited the bark and headed off across the neighboring athletic field. She perches farther away than Ezra, who has picked a lightpost on the same field as the nest both times we’ve visited recently. She spent her time eating something atop the pole, circling a little, and landing on a neighboring pole.

Meantime, back at the nest, one of the hawklets practiced flapping.

Ezra had taken off shortly after we arrived, and we saw him getting mobbed across the field.

He must have held his own, because he arrived back at a lightpost near the nest.

We were about ready to leave, but we waited a few minutes more just in case Red flew back across to the nest. Instead, Ezra launched from his post, and she followed a few moments later. They circled together and went out of sight.

We decided to take their cue and head out ourselves. We’d seen what we came to see. The most incredible experience was seeing Red in that tree, so close, yet so intent on her bark-ripping!

I wrote about our other two hawk visits here (at my other blog) and here.

We made our second trip to visit the hawks featured on Cornell’s webcam on May 12. It was Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Migration Festival, and our family went to the lab to enjoy this opportunity to get a glimpse of all the many aspects of the Lab’s work. I’ll write more about it in another post.

After a full schedule of events there, we stopped by the hawk nesting site on Tower Road to see what we could see. Ezra (the male) was on the nest when we arrived, and Big Red (the female) was perched on a light tower across the athletic field from the nest.

We stayed for about 15 minutes, but that was all the time we had. As we started for the car, I saw Red flapping back toward the nest. I was not in the best position any longer, shooting toward the sun, but I snapped a few shots of the shift-change. Big Red was quite vocal when she returned to the tower, and Ezra didn’t wait long to dive off and head for a nearby light pole.

He seemed to consider for a few moments. Then he took off and sailed into the blue. He was aware of us but didn’t appear to be threatened at all.

It’s strangely stirring to see a hawk taking flight. Science can answer so many questions, but not all of them. In the end we’re one species observing another, separated by a gulf of differentness, but joined by a kind of respect and wonder in watching the strength and grace of that spiral into the sky.