These hawks build a nest and raise young in a busy central toronto park in the spring of 2012. This park borders two cemetaries, the don river valley and rosedale valley.
After a whole season of watching this pair we were moving away from the park, this large ash, and a small fort in the woods on the bank of the rosedale ravine, sitting in this fort before the move, woven with living riperian grape vine, in a lull in conversation one of the cooper’s hawks dove at an incredible speed through the thick canopy of trees that hid the fort, and alighted gracefully on a branch 8ft away and looked keenly right at us for a long moment.
So much learned in studying these birds and chatting to neighbors about them and the lives of they’re young, doesn’t really show up in this film of them and the nest….but here it is.