MIRACLE ON 74th STREET!
Have you read the saga of Pale Male and Lola? These two are red tailed hawks who set up residence on the cornice of a Manhattan apartment building overlooking Central Park - very fancy digs! Paula Zahn and family and Mary Tyler Moore are just two of the residents and their apartments sell for $18,000,000! The hawks attracted worldwide attention, hundreds of daily hawk watchers, and are featured in a beautiful DVD and documentary and have their own website. So far so good - but a couple of weeks ago the management decided to tear down the nest in spite of these animals being protected on the theory that the current nest was not occupied with eggs or chicks. Wrong! Red tailed hawks are raptors and use the same nest year to year. They indicated it was messy and harming the building. In all fairness bird poop is incredibly corrosive to buildings and half eaten carcassas of their prey on the sidewalk are a bit daunting. But in this neighborhood they could hire someone to clean it up.
Management had no clue as to the reaction, worldwide, to the removal of this nest and the associated bad publicity. It should be noted they also removed the pigeon deterring spikes which served to hold the nest in place. Pale Male is no fool. He knew where to contruct his home with the spikes anchoring the twigs and branches he and Lola use.
Well, miracle of miracles, management is now putting the nest back together again and with a little luck Pale Male and Lola will rescontruct their lovely digs and produce more wonderful chicks for the world to watch - Maybe there is a Santa Claus, Virginia.
Here is a link to a picture and the news story!
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/265141p-226986c.html