Neither more nor less

A hungry Red Tailed hawk hunted throughout the latter part of St Patrick's Day afternoon and into the early evening in Tompkins Square Park . Red Tails do not normally hunt in the latter part of the day and certainly not in the evening ; they do not see especially well in low light . It could be seen though that the hawks crop was empty . The desperate hunt went on well past sundown .

Red Tails seem to prefer to hunt from perches . A tree limb , a building ledge , a fence , any place from which prey can be spotted and descended upon . This day though after diving and dropping again and again from a perch no prey was taken .

In one instance the hawk dropped like a rock from a tree limb onto a rat . When the hawk attempted to ferry the rat to a favorite broad and flat tree limb for dismemberment and consumption it dropped the rat into a shrub . It dived into the shrub in pursuit of the rat but could not recapture its lost dinner .

The red Tail winged its way around TSP flying from perch to perch , hunting in the red light of a setting sun until it was just too dark to see its prey . The Red Tail went to sleep without dinner this day roosting in a tree on 10th street .

We note that though the images above may not appear so very dark the actual scene when photographed was much darker . For instance the scene of the hawk taking to air with rat in talons was dark enough to make it difficult to see and focus the lens correctly . There is blur and grain because the shutter speed was relatively slow , the ISO was high and the lens was set wide open at f 1 giving little depth of Field .