Three Baby Hawks Most Likely Poisoned

Three Baby Hawks Are Most Likely Dead
By Sewell Chan
New York Times article

One of the adult red-tailed hawks in Riverside Park. (Photo: D. Bruce Yolton via New York City Audubon)

As if this Monday morning weren’t dreary and chilly enough, now comes news that three nestlings born in recent weeks to red-tailed hawks in the south end of Riverside Park are believed to have died.

The body of only one young hawk — or eyas — has been recovered so far. The city’s avid bird-watchers have confirmed that the other two babies are not in their nest and are feared dead as well.

“It’s so devastating,” said Dr. Leslie Day, who recovered the body of one of the chicks on Sunday and kept the body refrigerated to preserve it. This morning, Dr. Day, a naturalist who teaches at the Elisabeth Morrow School and the Bank Street College of Education, gave the body to a friend, the photographer Lincoln Karim, who planned to drive to Delmar, N.Y., near Albany, and turn the corpse over to Ward B. Stone, who runs the Wildlife Pathology Unit of the State Department of Environmental Conservation. Mr. Stone is expected to perform a necropsy to determine the cause of death.

Dr. Day said she first heard something might be amiss on Saturday morning, when she got a call from Beth Bergman, a friend who watches and photographs the birds. Later that evening, Dr. Day received an e-mail message from Mr. Karim, also expressing alarm. (Mr. Karim runs the Web site palemale.com, which follows the lives of two more well-known East Side hawks, Pale Male and Lola.)

“On Sunday morning I went out at 7 a.m.,” Dr. Day said in a phone interview this morning. “Standing at the nest, I could see there were no babies. They had become so large, standing at the rim, strengthening their wings.”

Dr. Day said she told a friend, Cal Vornberger, the author of “Birds of Central Park,” that she was worried. “At that moment a dog walker came by,” Dr. Day recalled, “saying another dog walker had seen the mom carrying her dead baby out to drop on the ground.” The dog walker told Dr. Day that the other dog walker said she could not bear to leave the body on the ground and had placed it in a bag, then in a trash can. Dr. Day and the second dog walker, who herself walked by, went over to the trash can and retrieved the body.
“And this was Mother’s Day,” Dr. Day said sadly.

News of the deaths has quickly made its way across blogs watched by bird lovers.
While the cause of death awaits a toxicology analysis, Dr. Day suspected that the parents may have fed the nestlings pigeons or rats that contained lethal levels of poison — a common cause of death for the delicate hawks.

Bird-watchers said they were saddened by the news. “I’ve lived on Riverside Park since 1969 and it’s only this year that I’ve seen a hawk,” said Carol Andrus, who was walking her Rottweiler, Bruno, on Saturday. “We had a lot of seagulls and robins and other stuff. I’ve been watching these hawks — they are just fascinating birds. On Saturday morning I went to the park really early and a woman was standing there crying, saying: ‘The baby hawks aren’t there. They’re dead.’ About 15 other people were there. I didn’t want to cry publicly. I said to myself, ‘C’mon Bruno, we’re going home.’ I told my daughter and then she started to cry. It’s so sad.”

Update added 5/14/2008:
http://washingtonsquarepark.wordpress.com/2008/05/13/riverside-parks-