Good morning. It’s Wednesday. We’ll find out about a new arrival at a Fifth Avenue address made famous by Pale Male, the celebrity red-tailed hawk. We’ll also get details on the agreement that ended the Long Island Rail Road strike.
So Pale Male’s ex has taken up with a younger mate, and there’s at least one little one. From the 1990s until his death in 2023, Pale Male was the red-tailed hawk that was famous for the Fifth Avenue address and the girlfriends. Now Octavia, the name given to his last mate, has returned to the nest they shared — with someone else. “So much drama,” said Stella Hamilton, a birder who has watched Octavia since 2014, even following her to stealthy rendezvous with another hawk during the Pale Male days. Then, after Pale Male’s death, “she was kind of picky about selecting a mate,” Hamilton said. “Every year she would have a boyfriend, but it wouldn’t last. Just not satisfied with their nest-building skills, or whatever.” The birding world doesn’t seem to have settled on a name for the new guy. But in the last few days, the two of them have been seen doing the things new parents do, like flying off for takeout — a rat, or perhaps a pigeon. There have been occasional glimpses of a fuzzy whitish ball — a chick. Octavia produced offspring with Pale Male in 2013. D. Bruce Yolton, a birder who admits to “nestalgia” — nostalgia for “the wonderful experience with Pale Male” — said he had assumed that Octavia “was past her prime for having chicks.” But no. “We saw her in courtship behavior this spring,” said Jessica Wilson, the executive director of NYC Bird Alliance (formerly NYC Audubon), and then Octavia and the new mate settled in at 927 Fifth Avenue, at 74th Street. Octavia laid eggs in April, Wilson said, and the birding world waited and watched. There is no consensus on how many eggs Octavia laid: Birding world’s binoculars and telephoto lenses can’t see into the nest. Nor do birders know much about “her new fellow,” said David Barrett, who maintains the Manhattan Bird Alert account on X. And what can be discerned from photographs is soap opera-worthy. “There’s this huge age difference,” Barrett said. The new male’s eyes “are still a bit yellow,” while Octavia’s are “quite dark.” “That’s the usual pattern of aging in hawks,” he said. “I wouldn’t say he has the bright eyes of a juvenile, but his eyes are not totally dark, either. We can say he’s not an old adult. Maybe just 2 years old, maybe just 3 years old.” But he seems to have adapted to fatherhood, maintaining the nest and feeding the chick or chicks, if there is more than one. “Birders witnessed terrific nesting behavior,” Wilson said. “He was conscientious. He brought her food. The fact that they’re raising chicks is a very positive sign.” A symbol of resurgence and resistancePale Male became the symbol of a resurgence that Wilson sees as a conservation success story. By 2008, he was said to have sired 23 youngsters with a succession of mates, and the nest at 927 Fifth Avenue is not the only one on the edges of Central Park where new chicks have been seen. Birders say that youngsters have hatched in a nest at the New York Athletic Club, at 180 Central Park South. Two other nests have also been spotted just inside Central Park, one near West 87th Street, the other near West 93rd Street. Pale Male also became a symbol of resistance. In 2004, the co-op board at the Fifth Avenue building — exasperated with the discarded rat carcasses and bird droppings on the sidewalk below the nest — evicted him. Mary Tyler Moore, who lived in the building at the time, joined opponents; protests stopped traffic on Fifth Avenue. The co-op backed down, but no eggs hatched for several years. Lola, the female hawk that was in the picture at the time, disappeared in 2010, and was followed by Lima, who died in 2012. Octavia laid no eggs in the last few years of Pale Male’s life. The last hatchings had been in 2018. Wilson said the co-op board at 927 Fifth had “become a terrific landlord.” The building’s staff members had contacted her group “to ask whether it would be safe to do any work on the building,” she said. It was safe, at the time the call came, in early March. But the building stopped the project “when they found out that the birds had started nesting again.” WEATHER Today, look for increasing clouds, possible showers and thunderstorms, and a high around 92. Cloudy and rainy conditions are expected to continue tonight as temperatures drop near 59. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING In effect until Friday (Shavuot). QUOTE OF THE DAY “The industry missed the boat on this one, but the audience didn’t.” — Tom Kirdahy, a producer of “Just in Time,” the musical about the pop star Bobby Darin. It opened 13 months ago to low expectations among show business types who assumed that Darin, dead since 1973, was no longer famous enough to sell tickets. The latest New York news
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Both sides in the Long Island Rail Road strike — New York transit officials and five unions — are claiming victory after reaching a deal that ended the three-day strike. But the agreement could set a precedent for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s dealings with more than 80 unions, with long-lasting repercussions. My colleagues Stefanos Chen and Grace Ashford write that the agreement includes a wage increase of roughly 4.5 percent for 2026, spread over a few weeks longer than a year, and a retroactive raise for the past three years. Gov. Kathy Hochul said that the terms would not result in higher fares or taxes, a consideration as she runs for re-election against Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County executive. But the raise for this year is higher than the pre-strike offer of 3 percent from the M.T.A., the state agency that runs the railroad. Beyond the financial implications of the agreement that ended the strike, the dispute eroded trust between the railroad’s workers and leadership, said William Dwyer, an associate professor at Rutgers University and a former labor negotiator for management at the utility company PSE&G in New Jersey. And, he noted, the two sides must negotiate another contract in just a year. METROPOLITAN DIARY Breakfast to go
Dear Diary: Gerard and I ride a quiet early morning A train to Kennedy Airport. I don’t want to leave, but here we are again: West Coast-bound. Two older women sit across from us. At the far end of the bench sits another woman who is traveling alone. One of the older women takes out a pack of dried pollock and offers some to her friend. They each take a handful and nosh away in silence. Gerard takes out his foil-wrapped bagel. He can’t wait to eat until we get to the airport, he says. The woman at the end of the bench pulls an orange from her bag, and a wide smile of recognition spreads across her face as she looks at each of us. Wordlessly, she points at the older women, then at Gerard, then at herself, as if to say: “Breakfast time!” She gets to work peeling her orange with great efficiency. Once she is done, she catches my eye again and leans across the car to hand me half. “Oh, that’s OK!” I say. She shakes her head as I try to hand it back and gives me that same smile. I accept and join in on the subway strangers’ silent snack hour. — Eliana Gottesman Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. |
