The New York Sun
December 10, 2004
Bird Lovers Chant For the Return Of Hawks' Nest
By Richard Pyle - Associated Press
With a mixture of anger and disappointment, bird lovers staged a second day's
vigil outside a luxury apartment house yesterday, hoping to restore a nest
that was ripped from the building's facade, evicting a pair of red-tailed
hawks from their decade-old aerie 12 stories above Manhattan.
Between 50 and 70 people gathered across the street, holding lighted candles and chanting, "Shame on you, bring back the nest."
"We hope to influence the building's residents. We want the building to return
the nest," said E.J. McAdams, executive director of NYC Audubon, organizers
of the vigil. He said his group had been flooded with protests.
Some 70 Audubon Society members and sympathizers also turned out on Wednesday
to express their grievances and watch the dispossessed hawks, Pale Male and
Lola, circling overhead, trying to figure out what had happened to their
high-rise domicile. The birds were not seen yesterday.
Over the years, Pale Male - so named for his plumage - and a series of mates
produced about two dozen chicks in the unusual urban nest, attracting thousands
of fans and becoming world-famous through a book, "Red-Tails in Love," television
documentaries, and a Web site.
In a letter, NYC Audubon asked Mayor Bloomberg to "urge the return" of the
nest from the company whose workers had taken it down on Tuesday. Mr. McAdams
said the society also asked Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's office to determine
whether any state regulations had been violated.
Witnesses said construction workers had showed up unannounced, raised a scaffold,
and stripped out the huge nest from the window ledge where it first appeared
in 1993 and was rebuilt two years later. While redtailed hawks are protected
under the federal Migratory Species Treaty, the law does not prohibit removal
of an "inactive" nest - one containing no chicks, eggs, or nestlings, said
a spokesmen for the Fish and Wildlife Service, Nicholas Throckmorton.
Pale Male and Lola produced three fledglings last June, and as recently as
Sunday were making home improvements with new twigs, said Lincoln Karim,
an engineer at Associated Press Television News who set up a Pale Male Web
site and spends most of his free time recording their activities.
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