Pale man, famed Central Park Hawk, is dead at age 32. Maybe.
“Sorry to report the end of an era,” Bobby Horvath, a wildlife rehabilitation specialist, wrote on Facebook Tuesday evening. “Pale Male passed away tonight in our care.”
Pale Male, a red-tailed hawk that took up residence on the edge of a posh Manhattan apartment building 30 years ago, was the subject of hundreds of newspaper articles, at least three books and one award-winning documentary film and also counted Mary Tyler Moore among his fans.
But whether the bird that Mr. Horvath actually declared dead was a pale male remains a mystery.
An apex predator living in the United States’ most populous city, Pale Male was New York City’s original famed bird, before Barry the barred owl, the “hot” mandarin duck, and Flaco the eagle owl.
It was named for its light-colored feathers by bird watcher and author Marie Winn, a longtime columnist for The Wall Street Journal who tracked his progress in print for over a decade and wrote a book about him, “Redstarts in love‘, making him something of a local celebrity.
But Pale Male stole the national spotlight in 2004, when the co-op board of 927 Fifth Avenue, where he had moved into in 1993, decided to evict the hawk and his mate and remove the nest the pair had left on the facade of the antebellum building. building. A riot assured. Ms. Moore, who had lived in the building since 1989, appeared on national television and declared the destruction of the birdhouse “senseless and heartless”.
One of the first of its kind to nest in New York City, Pale Male became an ambassador for urban life in the days before social media. He attracted crowds of people with binoculars that would stand on Fifth Avenue and watch as he flew, fed, mated, and nursed his chicks.
On Monday afternoon, a park ranger found a sick red-tailed hawk on the ground in Central Park, near East 79th Street and Fifth Avenue. Mr. Horvath, who specializes in bird of prey rescue, was contacted.
“I picked him up and I immediately called my vet’s office,” said Mr. Horvath. ‘They had him drawn for blood. They’ve taken x-rays to rule out any orthopedic injuries, or any fractures.’
There were no fractures, and Mr. Horvath took the hawk home and waited for the blood test results. Meanwhile, the bird was given antibiotics, some meat and liquid. “We actually gave him a small meal,” Mr. Horvath said. But the bird was seriously ill and did not make it through the night, he died in his sleep.
If the hawk was indeed a pale male, it could have lived to be 32 years old.
However: The average lifespan of a hawk is about 20 years. Which means that either the Pale Male was truly an extraordinary bird – or the Pale Male was not the Pale Male at all.
Gabriel Willowa freelance naturalist who leads bird walks in Central Park from time to time said he wasn’t sure whether Pale Male was the original or a descendant.
“It does look similar, but it doesn’t look the same,” Mr Willow said, adding that this was normal, as a bird’s appearance can change as they molt their feathers.
On the other hand, a Pale Male Jr. appear suddenly on the scene without anyone knowing? “He was watched so closely,” Mr. Willow said. “I guess I don’t know what to think about it.”
Mr Horvath believes the bird – whose corpse was in his freezer when he spoke to a reporter – was the original Pale Man.
“I have to go with, you know, the hawks I know and rely on,” Mr. Horvath said. “And I trust them. And they tell me he is the original.
He said that if the bird was the original Pale Man, it would have “dodged so many bullets,” from swallowing rat poison to surviving the usual life expectancy.
Mr. Willow doubted it was the real Pale Man. “It seems unlikely to me that the most famous red-tailed hawk of all time would also be the longest-lived,” he said.
He said if the recently deceased hawk was in fact a pale male, it was like losing “a lofty figure”.
“Its performance is unparalleled among the red-tailed hawk community,” said Mr. willow. “He established a breeding area and then a subsequent breeding dynasty.”
He added, “Many of New York City’s red-tailed hawks today are his direct descendants.”
And then he got philosophical: “I think what’s meaningful about Pale Male is the way he captured the public imagination. And as such, at the end of the day it doesn’t matter if it was a Pale Man or not.”