UPPER WEST SIDE — This hawk is a cougar.
Riverside Park's widowed red-tailed hawk, who broke Upper West Sider's hearts as she raised her babies alone after her mate was killed last year, has found new love — with a younger male.
Hawk watchers say the female has been spotted with a much younger bird — and the couple seems to be settling down.
The romantic raptors have been seen soaring side by side and perching together on lamp posts. Recently, hawk watchers saw the love birds breaking twigs off trees and taking them to the female's nest just north of the Boat Basin Cafe — a sign that the pair will probably start a family together.
"It's fantastic," said hawk watcher Kevin Sisco. "A lot of us were concerned that she wasn't going to find another mate."
The new beau is welcome news for Riverside Park's female red-tailed hawk, who's endured more than her share of the hardships of urban hawk living.
Believed to be about seven years old, the mama hawk has birthed four sets of young. Two of her first hatchlings died after eating the meat of a poisoned rat. Two were killed the following year when they were hit by a car on the West Side Highway, and three baby hawks died when a nest was knocked down by a wind storm.
Last year, the female hawk lost her mate when he died after eating a poisoned rat. Left to rear her offspring alone, the resilient single mom managed to keep her family alive.
Hawk watchers spotted the new feathered fella around September. They suspected he might be The One when she didn't banish him from her territory.
"An early sign of romance in hawks is that they're tolerating each other," said hawk watcher Pamela Langford. "She would chase (other hawks) out of the territory if she didn’t want them here. She's pretty ferocious."
Known as a skilled hunter, the hawk mom is also a beauty, with light coloring similar to the famed Pale Male. Most adult red-tailed hawks have a dark horizontal stripe across the bottom of their tail feathers. Riverside Park's female stands out because she has very little dark coloring on her tail, Sisco said.
"She's very pretty as far as hawks go," Sisco said.
The female's new man has very light eyes, which means he's a youngster, as hawks' eyes darken as they age. Watchers believe the new male is about two years old and hasn't mated and nested before.
"It will be interesting to watch him cope with the situation and see how he does," Langford said.
The new male seems to be an "adequate" hunter adept at catching pigeons, but he's not nearly as accomplished as the more experienced female, who Langford described as "lethal."
In past years, Langford has watched new father hawks improve their hunting and parenting skills, and she said she's hoping to see the same evolution in the mama hawk's new companion.
If the feathered duo continue nest-building together, the mother hawk could be laying eggs around March.
But a possible threat to the new hawk family's long-term survival is rat poison. Sisco said he's worried there's been an increase in rats in Riverside Park because more people seem to be leaving out food for pigeons and squirrels.
As the rodent population grows, so do the chances of a hawk ingesting deadly poison when they hunt rats, a popular snack for the raptors.
"If you're a hawk lover, then try to fight that urge to feed any of the animals in the park," Sisco said. "What you're really doing is leaving food for the rats."
