In January 2005, I visited the boat pond in Central Park to see the new nest
support replacement for the evicted Red-Tail hawks. I had great views of not
only the nest architecture but the female Red Tail "Lola" perched on a
window-ledge on 5th avenue. Lots of fun with the Tele Vue 60 and 3.5mm Nagler at
103x for scores of passersby, plus old friends like photographer Rik Davis.
You might enjoy the following excerpt from her book, of her visit to an
apartment across Central Park in hopes of seeing whether the eggs had hatched.
I had not given up hope entirely when I paid a visit to
Stanley Diamond, a lawyer who lives on the eleventh floor of a building on
Central Park West and 74th Street – directly across the park from the hawk
building. Though his apartment was considerably farther from the red-tail
nest than the hawk bench was, he had managed to bridge the gap – and then
some – by means of technology: in his living room window stood an
astronomical telescope pointing directly into the hawk nest. While our
strongest spotting scopes magnified sixty times, his instrument was more
than four times as powerful as that. I cadged an invitation to pay him a
visit – I knew a friend of a friend of a colleague of his wife's. A look
through his telescope might end our speculation once and for all. Maybe I
would see chicks at last, or at least eggs.
It was a fabulous apartment, but as soon as I walked into the living
room and saw the telescope in the window, I headed for it like a horse
with blinders. I dutifully wrote down its name, for I knew the
birdwatchers, ever interested in optics, would ask. It was a TeleVue
Optics telescope with a Nagler lens and a 2.5 doubler. I stood on tiptoe
without waiting to have the tripod adjusted to my height, too eager to
take the look I had been anticipating so keenly
The image was oddly dreamlike – everything was floating as if it were on
water. At first I didn't recognize the hawk. From the hawk bench, I was
used to seeing just the top of the head of the bird in the nest; now
almost the entire bird was visible. It was Pale Male, though it took me a
while to be sure. He looked so different at that magnification – so much
more, well, personal. The markings around his beak gave his face an
expression as if it were a human face. He looked proud, somewhat
disdainful. That was my impression as I gazed through the telescope at
him.
From the hawk bench, the bird in the nest looked motionless. Now I
could see Pale Male's head making constant little movements – he was
watchful, alert. I could see his eye clearly, and a startling illusion
made it seem as if he were looking directly at me. Alas, I could see
immediately that even if the bird flew off, the inside of the nest would
not be visible. The angle was wrong. The window was not quite high enough
to look down into the nest.
The only piece of substantially new information I picked up on my
expedition across town was about Stanley Diamond's next-door neighbor
there on the eleventh floor. It was Mia Farrow, Woody Allen's ex. Her
apartment also looked out at the hawks' nest – and at Woody's building too,
come to think of it. I wondered if she had a telescope in her window.