By Leslie Albrecht
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
UPPER WEST SIDE — The father of Riverside Park's newborn baby hawks is reportedly dead, and hawk watchers fear the raptor parent may have been poisoned by tainted rat meat.
Hawk watcher Bruce Yolton, who writes the blog Urban Hawks, reported that the male hawk's body was discovered Sunday, about 10 days after the feathered father was spotted eating a dead rat near a dumpster where the Parks Department recently placed rat poison.
The hawk's remains were sent to a lab for testing, Yolton told DNAinfo. The results could determine whether the hawk dad succumbed to the rat poison, which the Parks Department recently placed behind the Boat Basin Cafe at the West 79th Street Boat Basin, not far from the hawk family's nest.
Hawk watchers believe two hatchlings died after eating the meat of a poisoned rat in 2008. But Yolton cautioned on his blog that hawk lovers shouldn't jump to conclusions, because the red-tailed hawk father was also recently seen hunting in an area that didn't contain poison.
It's Parks Department policy not to put out the rat poison after baby hawks hatch. To minimize the chance of another animal ingesting the poison, it's placed in secure bait traps or deep within holes and crevices in the park's stone walls, a Parks spokesman said in early April.
"The problem of rat infestation is common across the city, and is the subject of frequent public complaints and requests for extermination in our parks," Parks Department spokesman Phil Abramson said in an e-mail Tuesday. "We value our wildlife and work diligently to create the necessary balance between public health and safety, and wildlife health and safety."
Hawk watcher Pamela Langford, who regularly bikes to Riverside Park from her downtown home to visit the hawks, called the father's death "devastating."
"It’s almost like your dog dying," Langford said. "It just is horrifying. I think carelessness caused this, if the death turns out to be rat poison."
The park's beloved hawk family recently hatched at least two new babies. It's difficult to tell how many young ones are in the nest, which is perched high in a tree just north of the 79th Street Boat Basin.
Now the dead hawk's female mate will be a single mother, left to care for the babies, called eyeasses, herself.
That will be difficult, because hawk parents work in a team, said Langford.
One parent, usually the male, hunts for food, while the female keeps watch over the young ones in the nest. At this stage, the eyeasses are too young to keep themselves warm, Langford said, because they don't have many feathers.
"I guess she'll be driven by hunger to leave them," Langford said. "I think it will take incredible good luck for her to be able to raise them."
The father's death marks another blow for the animal family, who've endured several tragedies over the past few years.
Two young hawks were killed when they were hit by a car on the West Side Highway in 2009; three died last May when a windstorm knocked the nest to the ground. The family rebuilt their home and gave birth to two more offspring last August.