Adult Red-tailed Hawk in Pale Male's Space

Adult Red-tailed Hawk
CENTRAL PARK — 85TH St. & 5TH AVE.
Image by BEN CACACE
(Click image for a larger view)

Tonight this adult Red-tailed Hawk was spotted near the north edge of Pale Male's territory. It was just inside the 85th St. & 5th Ave. entrance. Blue Jays and Robins were making a racket.

It was fairly dark at the time of the photo — 18-Jul-2007 5:53pm EST, 1/25 sec @ f/3.7, ISO 400 (hand held & image stabilized). A tripod would have come in handy.

This hawk looks very similar to a hawk I photographed on 13-August-2006 on the west side of the tennis courts north of the reservoir in Central Park.

It resembles Pale Male superficially. The major differences are:

• chest color — Pale Male lacks this hawk's rufous tones
• belly-band — Pale Male's is less prominent & not as dense
• Pale Male's throat has significantly more contrast with the face

Take a look a this remarkable photo of Pale Male in flight from Lincoln Karim's site for comparison.

Scaup Identification Question

Scaup species — female
Central Park — Reservoir
Images by BEN CACACE

This scaup was on the reservoir this morning (Sun, 28 Jan 2007) briefly from at least 9:30a when I saw it after circling the reservoir. I left the area around 9:45a. The bird was not seen again by other birders I mentioned the sighting to.

Are there enough details in the two photos to ID this as Lesser Scaup (Aythya affinis)? The images are cropped from the original without any additional compression other than the normal JPEG compression.

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