Happy Mother's Day to the Franklin Institute formel

What a joy it was to salute the magnificent Franklin Institute formel on Mother's Day - definitely the front-runner for Hawk Mother of the Year.

       Kay Meng

      Kay Meng

She has done an amazing job of recovering from the loss of her mate - Dad - two weeks ago almost to the day.  Here she sat anxiously that Saturday morning waiting for him to return, with possibly the last greenery he brought to the nest surrounding the week-old eyasses.

As soon as the Franklin Institute started to drop food on the ledge, she figured out that this was the only way she could sustain herself and the baby hawks in the absence of Dad's formidable hunting skills.

Almost as soon as the food items (mice or white rats) are put through the window onto the ledge, she pounces towards them... 

      Scott Kemper

 ... and brings them efficiently back to the nest...

       Scott Kemper


... and feeds her eyasses.

       Kay Meng

How could anyone have predicted her miraculous acceptance of a new mate (T2) within a few days of Dad's disappearance? 

       Ari Rosenthal

And a mate who seems willing to make some huge adaptations and do his best to learn his role and responsibilities.

       Kay Meng

And two weeks after she lost the tiercel, her three fluffball eyasses have flourished and grown, and are now stretching their wings and showing off the beginnings of their powerful flight feathers.

      Scott Kemper

Her new mate, T2, has had to climb an extremely steep learning curve since he first arrived at the nest last Monday.  Normally, the tiercel initiates nest building in the fall and early winter, and will bring numerous sticks and twigs to the nest.  T2 is doing this well, but because it is May, the sticks and twigs are covered in leaves, and it seems to us that all he brings is greenery when food is needed.

Mom, however, seems happy to receive his gifts.

He is hunting and bringing prey back to the nest - usually small creatures like voles and sparrows.  His confusion with the speeded-up process of learning how to be a mated tiercel with a family - most of which he missed - shows in his tendency to remove food from the nest for his own eating.  He appears to be opportunistic, bringing in a vole, and racing out with a rat!  Cries of "Freeloader!" have been heard from outraged hawkaholics as he pulled this move several times in his first days on the nest.

This young hawk has landed in a kind of time-warp where he's supposed to do all the polite "getting to know you as my new mate" stuff and at the same time fast-forward past all the "we have one egg/we have two eggs/we have three eggs and now we're incubating."  He also missed the part where he brings her food on the nest while she's incubating.

He is much smaller and thinner than the formel and is probably several years younger.  It looks as if he has only ever hunted for himself, and it is taking a while for those instincts to be overridden by those of hunting for his new family.  But he is making progress, and although he still cannot seem to resist the urge to grab-and-go with the rat, he always reappears with it a few minutes later, though it is often missing some body parts when it is returned.

He is doing a fine job of feeding the eyasses under the formel's watchful eye.  He knows how to tear off small enough morsels...

 ... and then carefully reach forward...

...and feed it to the eyass.

John Blakeman made this assessment of T2:

"The twigs he's bringing to the nest are just the sorts of things usually brought in January and February, before eggs are laid. He's entered this whole process without going through the winter twigs-to-the-nest period; nor has he watched his mate sit and incubate in March and April, when he would then go into the serious hunting mode.

He's just a bit behind in the sequence of tiercel nesting behaviors. He's at least bringing voles to the nest, so he is fulfilling a good portion of his duties. I would hope that he will progress now to full hunting mode, giving up the stick thing. His taking away an uneaten or partially eaten prey means that he still doesn't have his duties (instinctual, but not fully developed) yet in place.

It's nonetheless remarkable that he's able and willing to do any of this.

And his provision of "mere" voles just indicates where he's hunting (in a meadow) and the lack of larger prey there. Voles can easily provide all the food Red-tails need, when provided in sufficient quantities.  Right now, it's probably good for the FI to continue set out rats or mice, as make-up prey for the entire family.

    --John Blakeman

We knew the formel's trust in him was complete when she allowed him to feed the eyasses by himself.  These images are from Mother's Day!  How appropriate that he seems to be giving Mom a break from nest duties.

T2 is such an enthusiastic eyass feeder that sometimes he doesn't seem to notice that his clients have started to keel over into their customary postprandial food coma, and he keeps trying to feed them.  Eventually, of course, he can't help but notice that no-one is awake...

... and off he goes.  When T2 leaves the nest...

        Kay Meng


... he can often be seen sitting close by, somewhere on the facade of the Franklin Institute.

        Ari Rosenthal

When Mom is away from the nest, she usually heads for her favorite tree across the expressway about 75 yards from the nest over on the Parkway.  

        Scott Kemper

She sits in the topmost branches where she can keep the nest in clear view.

        Scott Kemper

Once she relaxes, she will start to preen...

                                        Scott Kemper

... all the while watched from the nest by her eyasses who now are intensely curious about everything in their environment.

               Scott Kemper

The eyasses' rate of growth is simply astonishing.  When you see a bobblehead over the edge of the nest...

          Scott Kemper

... you don't realize how large the body beneath has become.

                           Scott Kemper

The eyasses can now stand up, and have started "wingercizing" - flapping their wings to strengthen the muscles that will soon be needed for flying.

        Scott Kemper

The flight feathers are erupting along the edges of their wings.

       Scott Kemper

        Kay Meng

They are starting to make grabs at the food instead of waiting to be fed.

         Kay Meng


If the Cute-O-Meter is still not in the red zone, these images should do the trick...

        Scott Kemper

        Kay Meng

How incredibly fortunate we are that this beautiful young tiercel has been accepted by the formel.

                   Ari Rosenthal

                     Kay Meng

On Mother's Day morning, as they sat side by side on a ledge at the Franklin Institute calmly watching the Race for The Cure roll beneath them...

       Karen McCunney


... it feels that the sadness of the past two weeks has been replaced by hope for the future of this pair of Red-tails and the three eyasses they are raising. 

Many thanks, as always, to the wonderful photographers who generously allow me to use their images that grace this post: Kay Meng, Scott Kemper, Ari Rosenthal and Karen McCunney.