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One good reason for New York city.
Yesterday I got a small volunteer writing gig, walked around Central Park for about two hours, watched a turtle flutter his claws at a female to try to woo her, and did a bit of odd flirting with a busker. But none of that was the best part of the day, something so cool that when it was over I immediately had to call my dad to let him know what'd just happened. Which was that I'd seen Pale Male. Yes, the Pale Male, a hawk so famous he has his own Wikipedia entry. Beat that, Jason Bateman.
I was walking on the East side of the Great Lawn, coming from the Turtle Pond, glanced up and saw some movement through the branches of some trees - it was clearly a bird bigger than a pigeon, and moved in and out of my line of sight, so I went over to where I knew it'd stopped. I checked around until I found it. When I saw it, I knew it was a pale red-tailed hawk but wasn't sure if it was the pale red-tailed, since he's fathered a lot of chicks by now. I took a couple of pictures just in case. After a couple of minutes, two men with industrial-strength cameras with their own tripods, the sort that look like fat telescopes for stargazing, parked right next to me and took some pictures themselves.
I was suspicious, and asked one if I should know its name just to be sure. He told me it was a red-tailed hawk. I told him yes, I knew the species, but is it a specific hawk? And he said, "It's Pale Male." They'd been following him around the park for a while that day. They were sure.
Birds of prey know they're cool. Pale Male, even more so. He took off right after I found out who I was looking at, flapping his way across the Great Lawn to a better spot. The men followed him, and I tried to calm down and stop grinning like a loon.
I was walking on the East side of the Great Lawn, coming from the Turtle Pond, glanced up and saw some movement through the branches of some trees - it was clearly a bird bigger than a pigeon, and moved in and out of my line of sight, so I went over to where I knew it'd stopped. I checked around until I found it. When I saw it, I knew it was a pale red-tailed hawk but wasn't sure if it was the pale red-tailed, since he's fathered a lot of chicks by now. I took a couple of pictures just in case. After a couple of minutes, two men with industrial-strength cameras with their own tripods, the sort that look like fat telescopes for stargazing, parked right next to me and took some pictures themselves.
I was suspicious, and asked one if I should know its name just to be sure. He told me it was a red-tailed hawk. I told him yes, I knew the species, but is it a specific hawk? And he said, "It's Pale Male." They'd been following him around the park for a while that day. They were sure.
Birds of prey know they're cool. Pale Male, even more so. He took off right after I found out who I was looking at, flapping his way across the Great Lawn to a better spot. The men followed him, and I tried to calm down and stop grinning like a loon.