By Serena Solomon
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MIDTOWN — A baby red-tailed hawk may have hatched in Riverside Park.
A pair of the birds have been sitting on two or three eggs in shifts for more than a month, and one appears to have arrived, according to eagle-eyed amateur photographer Lincoln Karim. He's been watching the pair for the last three years, and noticed the female's behavior change on Sunday, indicating a possible hatching.
"A tiny little baby just came out of the egg and the only way you can know what is happening is by the behavior of the mother," Karim said.
The nest is just north of the West 79th Street Boat Basin.
The young hawk will not be visible for about a week to the birdwatching paparazzi that often gathers near the nest in the evening.
"As happy as I am to see babies hatch, I cringe because there is a low chance of them surviving," he said. The last few years the two hawks have had six hatchlings and only one has survived, Karim said. Inner city life for hawks can be treacherous — rats, a prime food source, can be toxic with poison, and the Henry Hudson Parkway is just yards from the nest.
Toxic rats have become such a problem for the 30 or so nesting hawks throughout the city that the Department of Parks and Recreation pulls back on poison baiting.
"A rat may have a small amount of poison, but hawks feed on lots of rats and rodents," Sarah Aucoin, director of the Parks Department's Urban Park Rangers, told DNAinfo.
For Karim, he said that more can be done to keep the hawks healthy. While he has not seen rat poison in Riverside Park the last few years he has seen it on Riverside Drive where the hawks could also catch food for their young.
