Pale Male’s Progeny May Roam Central Park

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They might not share the same upscale address, but Pale Male and Lola have several fellow red-tailed hawks as neighbors – or perhaps offspring who remain in the neighborhood.


Birders tallied seven other red-tailed hawks, along with 5,595 other birds, living amid Central Park’s 843 acres. They live in uncounted anonymity amid the avian multitudes until each year around Christmas, when birders gather for the annual bird census, as they did yesterday.


Almost half of the birds counted yesterday in many of the city’s parks were urban birds, such as pigeons, starlings, and sparrows. The total compiled by the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation and New York City Audubon resembles numbers from previous years, according to the compiler for the bird census, Sarah Elliot.


“The most plentiful birds are not the most popular,” Ms. Elliot said.


Bird counters recorded other rare sightings yesterday, including two owl species, a tiny saw-whet owl sleeping in a pine tree on the west side of the Ramble, and an Eastern screech owl.


The nesting site of the city’s most famous avian couple, Pale Male and Lola, is to be restored this week atop the 12th-floor cornice at 927 Fifth Ave. Nearly two weeks ago the building took down the nest, and the anti-pigeon spikes that helped keep it in place, much to the dismay of many New Yorkers, who had grown attached to the hawks’ presence of a decade.


“We don’t know what happens to Pale Male and Lola’s young when they leave the nest, but when we hear of a bird nesting on a building we like to believe that it’s one of theirs,” the executive director of New York City Audubon, E.J. McAdams, said.


Red-tailed hawks in Central Park were said to number 10 until Friday, when a passer-by found a dead one in the Pine Hills section of the park near 72nd Street and Fifth Avenue. The proximity to Pale Male’s and Lola’s erstwhile abode worried many fans, but those fears were quickly assuaged after birders reported spotting the couple later in the day.


New Yorkers launched the first avian census in 1899 as an alternative to bird hunting, which was a popular Christmastime activity. The bird count spawned a national tradition a year later.


Results of bird counts for the rest of the city were not available yesterday.


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