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With a mustache, the cool factor would be too much
Location: left side of my couch, East Texas
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Here's an update on the story.
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/st...gion-apnewyork
Quote:
City Hawks evicted from Fifth Avenue nest trying to return
By VERENA DOBNIK
Associated Press Writer
December 8, 2004, 6:28 PM EST
NEW YORK -- They can't go home again, but two world-famous hawks booted from their Fifth Avenue nest were trying on Wednesday to do just that.
"I heard the cry of a hawk, I looked up and I saw Lola, the female, soaring up Fifth Avenue," said Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe, who visited the former site of the nest atop a posh apartment building where Mary Tyler Moore also lives.
Across the avenue, Lola's mate, Pale Male, could be seen in a Central Park tree.
"They were discombobulated, flying around in an agitated way," Benepe said. Lola was circling her former nest at the Fifth Avenue building, carrying twigs to try to rebuild it. Later, her mate was seen perched in the tree, with a pigeon he had caught.
The urban drama started Tuesday, in the rain, when workmen raised a scaffold to the top of the building and tore out the nest that lay over an arched cornice, anchored by spikes originally intended to keep pigeons from depositing their droppings there. The workers removed the spikes too.
For the past nine years, thousands of birdlovers have flocked to the nest on the 12th floor ledge that's been home to Pale Male, so named for his whitish plumage. There, he fathered 25 chicks with a succession of mates _ the last three fledglings in June.
The Fifth Avenue hawks gained fame through television specials and a book, "Red-Tails in Love."
The raptors are no strangers to city life, but they normally nest in trees, and there is no previous record of a pair taking up permanent residence on a high-rise building.
The birds are not merely a spectacle of nature, said Alex Matthiessen, executive director of the Riverkeeper environmental organization. They are natural predators, helping limit the rat population in Central Park.
Bird-watchers and neighbors reacted with anger and dismay at the nest's destruction, apparently on orders of the building's co-op board.
"What strikes me is the selfishness of a small group of residents who are scarcely affected, but have robbed thousands of people, including children, of the pleasure of these magnificent birds, right by Central Park," said Matthiessen. "These animals are a wonderful show of how nature can exist in the city. This was a violent, disruptive act."
But there was not much either parks authorities or environmentalists could do: Unless there are hatching eggs or small chicks in a nest, it is not illegal to remove it from private property.
The building is managed by the prominent Manhattan firm Brown Harris Stevens Property Management Services, which issued a statement Wednesday saying that they do not own the property and had acted "on behalf of the coooperative building owners in a management capacity. ... The building researched and carried out the removal of the nest during an inactive period as a safety precaution."
Benepe said he hopes residents of some neighboring building on Fifth Avenue might erect their own anti-pigeon spikes, perhaps luring Pale Male and his mate to build a new nest.
"Hopefully, there will be a more receptive welcoming board," Benepe said. "What I'd say to apartment owners is, you're contributing to nature and to the quality of life for not just humans but for animals too."
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On the Net:
Pale Male site: http://www.palemale.com
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