A Very Temporary Hawk Exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art starring Pale Male’s daughter

Hawk-tivity in the East Village has come to a near standstill as Gog pointed out earlier this week. So we ventured back up to Central Park this week to follow up on Pale Male and Octavia’s recently rehabbed and released fledgling (see WINORR releasing the bird, photos by Jean Shum, video by Cathy Weiner).

According to hawk watchers in Central Park, the bird has been on a bit of a cultural tour of 5th Avenue this week.  She spent time outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, waited in line to see the Woman in Gold at the Neue, and even checked out the Kandinsky’s at the Guggenheim.

After a couple of days with no sightings, we got word that the hawk was back along the northern edge of the Met at 86th St. and 5th Ave. For hours, the hawk put on a live show for spectators, joggers, and dogs alike.  

While visitors were dazzled just to see the hawk so closely, it turned out that she was doing a one-time-only, live, interpretive performance of pieces in the Met’s collection.

We are proud to bring you the highlights of her show.  

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Art references (in order of appearance):

1. Inlay of “Horus of Gold”, 4th century B.C., Egypt

2. Banda Mask, 19th–20th century, Baga peoples; Guinea

3. Finial in the Shape of a Bird’s Head, 4th century B.C., Northwest China

4. “Butterfly” stool (model no. T–0521), 1956, Sori Yanagi 

5. Outermost Coffin, spring 1926, Harry Burton

6. Fan quilt, ca. 1900, American

7. Alabama Tenant Farmer Wife, 1936, Walker Evans

8. “Butterfly” ball gown, 1955, Charles James

9. Study of a Young Woman, ca. 1665–67, Johannes Vermeer

10. Bird I, 1986, Santiago Calatrava

          Congratulations and thank you to the lovely newlyweds!

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Pale Male’s offspring treated & released back into Central Park

Great news from yesterday… WINORR released Pale Male’s now-healed fledgling back into Central Park after 2 weeks of treatment and care.  See their Facebook page for photos and video of the release. 

Central Park Hawk update:

Test results are in for the young hawk who died on August 12: rodenticide. More tests are being conducted to determine exactly what type of poison it was. 

The one who is still in the park was not spotted today.

Slightly longer update on Pale Male’s babies

An update on our story from yesterday:

The baby at WINORR is doing well today.  It has a healthy appetite and is eating a lot. No word yet on a possible release date.

The baby that has thus far eluded rescue was finally spotted today in the park. It flew around a bit, then sat for a few hours in a tree near Turtle Pond.  

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It was awake and alert all afternoon, which is great news, although it still wasn’t very active. It might be coming of out its illness (talons crossed) but there have been cases in the past where a sick hawk seemed better one day then rapidly declined…so hawk watchers will be back tomorrow morning to check on its progress.

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The Tenement Museum on Instagram: “Photo Courtesy of TwoHawksNYC. You never know what you are going to see on any given day in the Lower East Side. While walking past the…”

Excited to be mentioned by the best local museum! A must-see in NYC.  

The Tenement Museum on Instagram: “Photo Courtesy of TwoHawksNYC. You never know what you are going to see on any given day in the Lower East Side. While walking past the…”

Old Cemetery, New Tricks

One of the best things about New York City is that every place you step has a rich and storied history.  The East Village is rife with such tales and the New York City Marble Cemetery, where one of the young hawks recently spent an afternoon frolicking around, is no different.  

At its heyday in the 1830s, the cemetery was a fashionable place to be buried.  Underground marble vaults were thought to prevent the spread of yellow fever that had plagued the city since the 1790s.  President James Monroe was buried there in 1831 (and later moved) and there is even a prominent shipping merchant buried there…his name is, we kid you not, Preserved Fish.

According to Ephemeral New York, in the 1890s, Jacob Riis wanted to turn a nearby marble cemetery (the New York Marble Cemetery, which was started by the same people) into a playground for street kids who had no other place to play.  It didn’t happen quite how he intended, but a young hawk certainly had some fun there last week…

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The young hawks are now 3 months old and they are learning to hunt.  Their parents are still making sure they are well fed in the meantime.  The cemetery is a perfect place for the hawk to practice: abundant squirrels and pigeons to go after and no people to get in the way! 

And this hawk was all over the place! It was very inquisitive.  Here it jumped on a bench…

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And examined some greenery…

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Here it is peeking behind a gravestone at a hidden squirrel…

“I’ll get you!!”

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“Where’d you go?”

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Later, it had a face off in a tree with a brazen squirrel…

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Then the hawk lunged at it…

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…but it was just posturing.  Maybe practicing its menacing looks.

It spotted something on the ground…

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…a squirrel out in the open…

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…it dove after it!

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…to no avail.

At one point, the hawk was on a fire escape at the back of the cemetery for a while and some of the animals became braver, coming closer to us to see if we were offering any food (we weren’t)…

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Later the hawk was exploring the ivy-covered wall on the western edge of the cemetery…

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…and a squirrel was on the corner of the fence in a conundrum: it was exposed with a peanut in its mouth.  

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So its options were to drop the nut and make a run for it or stay still and hope it wasn’t found out.  It took option B and quietly cried in fear – but thankfully it wasn’t discovered as its cries were muted by the peanut (the same mechanics as a trumpet mute!).

While the hawk flew around a lot, even above the fence once, surprising the humans on the sidewalk nearby…

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…the funniest moments were when the hawk was stalking prey on the ground.  Here, the hawk sees something in the shrub…

After hours of exploration, the hawk flew up out of the cemetery and over 1st Avenue…

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…circling higher and higher and eventually out of view into the summer sunset.