Red-tailed Hawk on a water tower
Buteo jamaicensis
Red-tailed Hawk · Central Park · 21 September 2025
A Red-tailed Hawk on the safety cage of one of Manhattan's wooden water towers, rather than a tree. Red-tails are the commonest large hawk in North America, at home in every habitat from desert to city, and Central Park's resident birds hunt the park's squirrels and pigeons from the rooftops around it.
They have adapted to city rooftops and towers as readily as to open country, and the park's birds are famous enough that several individuals have had their own names and followings. Pale Male, who nested on a Fifth Avenue cornice for three decades, had a book, a film and a picket line when the co-op board removed his nest.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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