At Long Range, A Raptor Dust-Up

After seeing reports about Beauty and the new tiercel over the weekend I thought it would be worthwhile to get out myself and see what was going on with the downtown falcons. I parked on the Court Street bridge at a quarter past Noon, fed the parking meter (35 cents gets you 37 minutes) and grabbed my camera and binoculars for a look around.

For early March the weather was pretty warm, with temperatures in the neighborhood of 40°F, but it felt a lot colder with the wind coming off the river. I looked around for a bit, checking the Mercury statue to be sure Beauty wasn't perched there, then making a long examination of the area around the nest box on the Times Square building:


No activity there, but after a few minutes I spotted the telltale silhouette of a Peregrine in the sky, and turned my camera lens skyward, just in time to catch an unmistakable stoop across the face of the Radisson hotel:
     

The object of her ire wasn't immediately apparent. When I reviewed the pictures I saw this Cooper's Hawk:
          

Beauty made a few angry passes, then flew a short distance and landed on a corner of the Hyatt hotel:
     

I looked back at the Radisson but the hawk was nowhere to be seen. I met up with Larry O'Heron after a short walk to the Broad Street bridge. We watched Beauty for the rest of the hour but she didn't move from her spot, so we headed back to work. Larry said he was going to make a stop at the former Psychiatric Center building to see if he could spot the pair that's been hanging out there. No sign of the male downtown today, but the short bit of action I witnessed made it a worthwhile hour.