Bird-lovers’ hearts fluttered and holiday cliches flew thick and fast yesterday as workers installed new underpinnings for the Fifth Avenue high-rise nest whose hawk occupants, Pale Male and Lola, were evicted earlier this month, triggering an avian crisis that gripped the city and echoed around the globe.

“It’s the miracle on 74th Street,” enthused E.J. McAdams, executive director of the city Audubon Society, which led a campaign to bring back the nest, taken down after residents of the East Side luxury apartment house deemed it a health and safety hazard.

As if on cue, the two red-tailed hawks winged in for a brief appearance on the 12th-floor window ledge they’ve called home for a decade, delighting rain-sodden hawk enthusiasts and television cameramen on a sidewalk across the street.

On the roof of 927 Fifth Ave., at 74th Street, workers prepared to lower the 300-pound stainless-steel cradle to the window pediment. The custom-designed mesh framework has the same anti-pigeon spikes removed when the nest was pulled down December 7.

The boat-shaped device also has a rim to keep carcasses of rats and pigeons from falling to the street, a major source of annoyance for the building’s residents, who include CNN TV personality Paula Zahn.

“It’s a very out-of-the-ordinary project for a New York City architect,” said Daniel Ionescu, the architect who designed the cradle. “You don’t get a call every day to design a nest on top of a pediment on a landmarked building.”

Since setting up housekeeping in 1993, Pale Male – so named for his white plumage – and a series of mates have produced about two dozen chicks and captivated nature lovers and schoolchildren who could view the nest through binoculars from Central Park.

The urban raptors were the subject of two TV documentaries and a book, “Red-Tails in Love,” whose author, Marie Winn, was among yesterday’s happy observers.

Occupants of the multimillion-dollar apartments had complained about telescopes violating their privacy. To remove the nest, they obtained U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service approval, under a rule that nests that contain no eggs or progeny can be removed.

But public reaction was swift and angry, as scores of people gathered daily with signs and chants of “bring back the nest!”

To underscore the hope the hawks will return, workers lugged the heavy metal cradle to the street, where various officials christened it with twigs, then returned it to the roof for installation.