Who's been eating in MY nest?

I was walking in Peter Cooper Village with Bernie the squirrel rescuer, and he was taking me over to meet a new family of black squirrels he'd discovered recently. As we approached the nest, we joked about there being a Mama Squirrel, a Papa Squirrel and a Baby Squirrel. When we arrived at the tree where the squirrels nested I looked up and saw a large bird in the nest. It was, of course, a red-tailed hawk. The birds of winter are back. We saw him eating something. It could only have been Baby Squirrel, who had probably been asleep in the nest, as Bernie had not seen the baby that day. The bird was just finishing its meal when we arrived, then it sat there comfortably in the nest like a god, while it rested and digested amid the devastation. We felt like crying and had to walk away. It's so hard to tend to squirrels in winter and yet they need you more than ever now, so you just do it.

When you walk around the park looking up you see all these lovely nests in the tops of the naked trees, so totally exposed -- like a gift to the gods -- with squirrels in there ripe for the picking.

If you can see the nest, the hawk can too.


You can see Lucky's nest at the top of the tree, and Lucky himself near the bottom of the picture.