Pale Male - I hope he doo doos on their heads

[SuzeQuze]

Originally Posted by amber

thanks for posting. That made me cry, of course. But i hope the neighbors build something...imagine coming home and someone took your house down...

This is exactly how I see it. These richies can pay someone to clean their bathroom but cannot find someone to hose off the street. I'ts re-g*dd*mned-diculous!!!! NO really, I saw this on Regis this morning and I was so pissed. Like it's so hard.

I am feeding some poor homeless kitties that live on my company's property (no one else "sees" them). But a hawk, oh man, if they perched outside my window, I would do everything in my power to be sure I was in that place until my dying day. And those kitties too, though they do not live on my ledge, they can count on the food from my hand.

[amber]

Originally Posted by SuzeQuze

This is exactly how I see it. These richies can pay someone to clean their bathroom but cannot find someone to hose off the street. I'ts re-g*dd*mned-diculous!!!! NO really, I saw this on Regis this morning and I was so pissed. Like it's so hard.

I am feeding some poor homeless kitties that live on my company's property (no one else "sees" them). But a hawk, oh man, if they perched outside my window, I would do everything in my power to be sure I was in that place until my dying day. And those kitties too, though they do not live on my ledge, they can count on the food from my hand.

I love you.
My dad feeds all the feral kitties at the mill he works at, too...

[strandinthewind]

Originally Posted by SuzeQuze

This is exactly how I see it. These richies can pay someone to clean their bathroom but cannot find someone to hose off the street. I'ts re-g*dd*mned-diculous!!!! NO really, I saw this on Regis this morning and I was so pissed. Like it's so hard.

I am feeding some poor homeless kitties that live on my company's property (no one else "sees" them). But a hawk, oh man, if they perched outside my window, I would do everything in my power to be sure I was in that place until my dying day. And those kitties too, though they do not live on my ledge, they can count on the food from my hand.

Again, I know this ilk. I know this one old lady who has her butler wipe her dog's ass after it defecates So, while that is her right and she certainly does not live in this building, do not hand me that CRAP (no pun intended ) that the myraid of staff in this building cannot clean the already FILTHY NYC sidewalk

I think the Board of the building, whose opinion on this I readily admit may be different from the other residents, did not want people looking at their building. All I have to say is the "law of threes" indicates that when you use your power for bad, it will come back on you threefold JERKS

[SuzeQuze]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

Again, I know this ilk. I know this one old lady who has her butler wipe her dog's ass after it defecates So, while that is her right and she certainly does not live in this building, do not hand me that CRAP (no pun intended ) that the myraid of staff in this building cannot clean the already FILTHY NYC sidewalk

I think the Board of the building, whose opinion on this I readily admit may be different from the other residents, did not want people looking at their building. All I have to say is the "law of threes" indicates that when you use your power for bad, it will come back on you threefold JERKS

Some folks believe that it is TENFOLD, so may those ass munchers get it a gazillionfold.

[SuzeQuze]

Originally Posted by amber

I love you.
My dad feeds all the feral kitties at the mill he works at, too...

Thanks sweetie. My brother says that there are some at his work too that folks feed. I cannot believe how many pp drop off kittens at work. I so wish I could catch them, ugh.

My kittens are adorable, I took pics of them last week and will show when I get them developed. Two are tiger striped and one is black and white with the cutest pattern. I wish I could take them in.

[sparky]

This makes me wish for a special circle in hell reserved for the idiotic and cruel - these yahoos would certainly be roasting in it.
Kudos to Mary - she is always on the right side. Gotta love her.

[strandinthewind]

December 11, 2004
No Fighting the Co-op Board, Even With Talons
By THOMAS J. LUECK and JENNIFER 8. LEE

hey gathered on Oct. 19 for a ritual known to thousands of New York co-op owners, the annual meeting. The board president, Richard Cohen, and his wife, the newscaster Paula Zahn, threw open their second-floor apartment overlooking Central Park for the occasion. Quickly, the discussion focused on a huge and untidy red-tailed hawk, known famously as Pale Male, which had been nesting on the building's facade for a decade.

The building, 927 Fifth Avenue, is among the city's most sumptuous - apartments behind the neo-Italian renaissance facade occupy entire floors, or two, and are worth well over $10 million. The roughly 10 people at the meeting included Robert A. Belfer, the founder of Belco Oil & Gas and a former director of the Enron Corporation; Dr. Robert Schwager, a plastic surgeon with offices on the ground floor; and Dr. Robert Levine, a Manhattan cardiologist who is married to Mary Tyler Moore.

Some shareholders had long complained about Pale Male and his mate, Lola, whose nest of twigs and small branches had grown to eight feet across a cornice outside the building's 12th floor.

The hawks were hardly hygienic, preying on pigeons and rats, sometimes dropping bloody carcasses on the roof or sidewalk. And bird watchers were constantly looking up with their cameras and high-powered binoculars.

The nest, board members said, had to go. There would be no vote among shareholders. Several people familiar with the discussions said it was Mr. Cohen who had headed the effort, even though his wife had once proclaimed her affection for the birds on television.

The building's management company, Brown Harris Stevens Property Management, had warned of a public backlash. "We told Richard it would be extremely controversial," said Noreen McKenna, a Brown Harris Stevens agent who serves as secretary to the board.

The story of Pale Male, how he came to live at one of Manhattan's most exclusive addresses and then was sent away, is one of wealth and fame meeting nature and instinct, of an obscure international treaty researched and clarified, and of anger among those who live in an elegant building where, Ms. Moore now says, relations have become frosty.

Pale Male had adopted Central Park as his home and feeding ground, had prospered for 11 years, siring 23 hawks, and no one knows whether he will rebuild a nest and stay, or simply fly away.

At the very least, his predicament serves as a reminder of an immutable force, perhaps peculiar to New York City: the power of a co-op board.

At the meeting, Dr. Levine stood up to object, but not on his own behalf.

"Dr. Levine was vocal," recalled Dr. Schwager, who described the Oct. 19 meeting. Neither he nor Dr. Levine is on the board. "He said, 'I can tell you categorically that Mary Tyler Moore is opposed to this.' "

Dr. Schwager joined in: "I said 'This will cause a major commotion in New York if you do this.' "

Both doctors were right.

Since workers removed the nest on Tuesday, dangling on a window-washing platform and shoving Pale Male's carefully foraged twigs into garbage bags, the building has been the focus of searing anger from those around the city and nation who saw the hawk as an emblem of raw nature and perseverance in a densely populated urban setting. Bird lovers have camped outside, held vigils and chanted in anger, occasionally joined by Ms. Moore.

Both Pale Male and Lola have been observed circling their cornice, and landing with bits of twigs and tree branches in what appeared to experts on the ground as a futile attempt to rebuild. Their nest-building may be stymied because metal spikes that held their previous nest in place have also been removed.

Mr. Cohen, a real estate developer, spoke publicly about the matter for the first time yesterday and defended the co-op, on the corner of East 74th Street. "Every year this became more problematic," he said of the nest, calling the decision the result of a consensus and flatly denying he had railroaded it through.

He called the eviction a "last resort" and said that board members believed the birds would thrive elsewhere, and quickly. "It takes a week to 10 days to rebuild a nest. Trees fall in nature. They lose nests. They are resilient animals."

Also yesterday, Maureen Wren, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Environmental Conservation, said the agency was working with the New York City Audubon Society to protect the hawks and determining whether any state laws had been violated.

The Audubon Society said that the co-op board has agreed to meet with it on Monday to discuss options. Possibilities include replacement of the spikes on the ledge or the construction of a platform elsewhere on the building's exterior.

Last night, about 40 hawk supporters gathered in the rain bearing photographs of the hawks and a placard that read "Honk 4 Hawks." Ms. Moore, whose apartment is for sale for $18.5 million, was skeptical about the prospects for an amicable resolution. "These are not reversible type people," she said of her fellow apartment owners. "They just don't want the birds here."

Said Dr. Schwager, "This building is unbelievably conservative and reserved. I think, should we all buy lottery tickets, there is a better chance we would win."

The eviction of Pale Male was long in coming, and had been tried once before. The hawk's longevity in his co-op nest was due primarily to a federal environmental treaty, signed by the United States, Canada, Russia, and other nations in 1918, that was intended to protect the habitats of several species of migratory birds, including red-tailed hawks, from poachers who sought birds for food or for their feathers.

The treaty, administered by the federal Fish and Wildlife Service, was invoked in 1993 when the board of 927 Fifth Avenue removed Pale Male's nest for the first time. The removal came only months after the hawk had built the nest on his 12th-floor cornice, and his mate at the time had tried unsuccessfully to hatch eggs.

Marie Winn, a bird watcher and author, whose 1998 book about Pale Male and his offspring, "Red-Tails in Love," became the basis for a public television documentary, was one of those who jumped to the hawks' defense in 1993. "They put up a scaffolding and took the nest down in a plastic bag," she said. "I got the workers to hand it over to me. I put in my bicycle basket, and took it to a secret place in the park."

Then, she said, she contacted officials of the Fish and Wildlife Service, who concluded that removing the nest violated the 1918 treaty.

The federal agency "put fear and trembling into their hearts" at 927 Fifth Avenue, Ms. Winn said. Board members at the co-op "promised to never remove it again, although they have always wanted to," she said.

Their opportunity arrived in April 2003, when the federal agency issued what it called a "clarification" to the migratory bird treaty. Instead of a complete ban on the removal or destruction of nests, it said the nests were protected only when they were being used to hatch or raise offspring.

The law "does not contain any prohibitions that applies to the destruction of a migratory bird nest alone (without birds or eggs)," said a memorandum spelling out the rule.

Federal officials said this week that the clarification was intended to ensure that different species are treated uniformly, and some of the birds, like robins, simply abandon their nests after their chicks are raised.

On Dec. 9, 2003, Ms. McKenna submitted an application, with photographs, to the Fish and Wildlife Service to remove Pale Male's nest. "The nest has caused deterioration of the building's canopy from bird droppings," she wrote. "In addition, the hawks bring live prey to the nest where it is killed and torn for feeding." She said the result was a danger of contamination, Lyme disease and West Nile virus.

The application included a report by James E. McCosker, a building engineer who inspected the building. He described the nest as "massive," and said it posed a danger to pedestrians because it was directly above the building's entrance.

"This ain't a regular nest," Mr. McCosker said in an interview. "How would you like to have a bird's nest 8 feet long and 3 feet wide overhanging the edge of the building by a foot?"

On April 30, Fish and Wildlife Service officials responding in writing, saying that no permit was needed to remove the nest.

"We had no knowledge that this was a famous pair of birds," said Diane Pence, the chief of the agency's division of migratory birds for the northeastern states, in an interview on Thursday.

"It was just an address in New York City to us," she said, but added that the position of the agency would not have been different if the nest was in a less prominent location.

Then came the October meeting, and finally, on Tuesday, workers came to take the nest down.

Lincoln Karim, a 43-year-old engineer who has been among the most diligent bird watchers in tracking Pale Male and his offspring (at the Web site www.palemale.com), said he saw it happen at 2:30 p.m.

After workers hung a window-washing style rigging from the roof of 927 Fifth Avenue, "I thought maybe they were checking masonry." he said. "Then I saw they were taking the nest down and putting it into garbage bags."

He added, "I thought, 'I'm going to climb up ropes. I'm going to stop them.' But I looked up and saw the nest was gone. It was just gone."

Other than Ms. Moore and Dr. Schwager, residents of the 11 apartments in the building have declined to be interviewed, among them Bruce Wasserstein, the Wall Street deal maker, and Ms. Zahn, who had referred to Pale Male in a 2001 segment of "The Edge with Paula Zahn," on Fox News Channel. She was interviewing two naturalists, one of whom commented on the problems associated with people feeding wild animals, and Ms. Zahn seemed eager to offer a glimpse of her personal life. "Well, guess what lives on my building, you two, a red-tailed hawk," she said. "It eats rats and pigeons on our block."

"I like the hawk," she said. "I am just not going to feed it."

But these days Pale Male is a sore subject among the residents of 927 Fifth Avenue. Mr. Cohen said Ms. Moore had not even mentioned the hawk when they had a friendly conversation at a recent party. She said she had been too upset to talk about it. The topic is largely off-limits when residents cross paths, she said. "We are playing the game of the elephant in the middle of the living room."


Janon Fisher contributed reporting for this article.

from the NYTimes

[gldstwmn]

Heh. I met Richard Cohen and Paula Zahn about 5 years ago when I was working with the Broncos. They were nice to me in that nice way that you treat a servant.
I can't stand them now. I hope they violated the treaty and are prosecuted and the protestors and the publicity surrrounding where they live forces them to move their pampered asses. I think I will also send an email to Ms. Zahn at CNN telling her how disgusting I think this is.

[strandinthewind]

I walked to the building today and joined the protest - there were about 100 or people AND they has signs that said HONK FOR THE HAWK - the people in that building had no peace and quiet ALL day let me assure you

[Nixxxed]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

I walked to the building today and joined the protest - there were about 100 or people AND they has signs that said HONK FOR THE HAWK - the people in that building had no peace and quiet ALL day let me assure you

Woohoo! But, how are your nerves after all that honking???

Thanks for posting the article with the Audubon link -- I signed the petition, and sent the link to all my friends with a note: "If you want your Xmas presents, sign this petition!"

[SuzeQuze]

Originally Posted by strandinthewind

I walked to the building today and joined the protest - there were about 100 or people AND they has signs that said HONK FOR THE HAWK - the people in that building had no peace and quiet ALL day let me assure you

Rock on with your bad self! Effers.

[Nixxxed]

Looks like we won! I'll believe it when the nest is rebuilt, but signs are good...

http://www.nycaudubon.org/home/

Victory for Pale Male

The spikes are going back - Pale Male and Lola will be able to rebuild.

NYC Audubon, National Audubon and the 927 Fifth Avenue co-op board have reached an agreement to restore the pigeon spikes that held in place the nest of red-tailed hawk Pale Male and his mate Lola. The building intends to erect a guardrail around the 12th-floor window cornice, the original location of the nest, in order to stabilize the area and make it more secure. We expect this to happen immediately and are moving it forward as quickly as possible for the sake of the birds.

The deal is signed and the spikes are coming but we will continue to hold peaceful vigils until they are put back.

Let’s encourage the return of Pale Male and Lola with a quiet vigil today, Thursday, at 4:30pm at 74th St. & 5th Avenue.

Vigils will continue on this schedule, until further notice:
Weekdays: 4:30-6pm
Saturday & Sunday: 12-2pm

We are encouraging children to send drawings and stories about what Pale Male means to them to our office at:
NYC Audubon
71 West 23rd St., Room 1529
New York, NY 10010
We will put the letters and drawings on posters for the vigils.

Photos of Pale Male’s fans are now up: photo page.