From the Spring 2026 issue of Dwelling Hen journal. Subscribe now.
Whereas Doug Sheerer was overseeing development on Cornell College’s Meinig Fieldhouse through the spring of 2025, he had a continuing, feathery companion.
Practically daily from March to August, Sheerer watched a Pink-tailed Hawk named Massive Pink—who has nested on campus for greater than a decade—flutter by way of the location, weaving between rising metal beams.
“She’s fairly a chicken,” says Sheerer, the mission superintendent. “Fairly a chicken.”
Earlier than development crews broke floor on the brand new fieldhouse in October 2024, there have been issues about whether or not Massive Pink would return to her longtime breeding space to nest atop a lightweight pole overlooking a former complicated of athletic fields within the coronary heart of the Cornell campus. Since 2012, her nest has been live-streamed and watched by millions by way of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Hen Cams mission.
Scientists on the Cornell Lab have been anxious development would scare off Massive Pink. However earlier than development started, Cornell’s amenities employees, the development workforce, and the Cornell Lab labored collectively to provide you with a plan to guard the nest website and incorporate bird-safe home windows within the new constructing.
“[This project] was all about attempting to be progressive and construct infrastructure and work round nature on the similar time,” Sheerer says. “It may be executed should you simply take note of what you’re doing.”
Building supervisor Jake Duell says when planning started, the 12 getting old mild poles surrounding the athletic fields have been slated to come back down. However two of them had held Massive Pink’s nest in previous years, and Cornell’s Services Division, following recommendation from the Cornell Lab, needed to present the hawk an opportunity to remain the place she at all times has. So the demolition crew left these two mild poles standing, “in hopes that the hawks would come again and nest in them,” Duell says. “It was actually only a shot at the hours of darkness that they’d come again.”
His crew additionally labored with the Cornell Lab to maintain the webcam operating, putting in new energy and information transmission strains on the remaining poles so it will be able to catch the motion if Massive Pink did certainly return.
On March 5, 2025, the Pink-tailed Hawk cam got here again on-line for its 14th season, and viewers watched Massive Pink and her mate, Arthur, rearrange the twigs left from 2024 on a remaining mild pole, shaping the pile right into a bowl. Earlier than lengthy, viewers noticed the nest achieve one brown-speckled egg, then one other, and at last a 3rd. Cam viewers adopted alongside as Massive Pink and Arthur raised their fledglings, seemingly unfazed by the brand new constructing rising on their territory.
“It labored out good,” Duell says. He says his work crew embraced the hawks as a part of day by day life, even sporting stickers of Massive Pink (presents made by one of many hawk cam followers) on their exhausting hats. On the most well liked days, the development crew stuffed water jugs and usual a makeshift birdbath.
“It’s humorous,” Duell says, “as a result of they’re essentially the most hardened guys that I’ve recognized perpetually, and so they’re so delicate on the subject of these birds.”
Charles Eldermire, the mission chief for the Cornell Lab’s Hen Cams, says he’s seen that Massive Pink, her mates, and her fledglings appear considerably unperturbable, so he’s not shocked the redtails got here again and nested once more. Nonetheless, he says, seeing Massive Pink return final spring was a reduction. The webcam, which attracts a small quantity of electrical energy from the poles, connects thousands and thousands of viewers to Massive Pink and her world. With out these poles, Eldermire says, that window into the hawks’ lives would have gone darkish.
“Giving an opportunity for nature to nonetheless thrive—for it to be resilient, to plan for not less than an opportunity for it to occur—may end up in one thing stunning,” Eldermire says.
The fieldhouse development additionally deliberate to put in glass etched with dots spaced two inches aside to make sure the hawks wouldn’t collide with the brand new constructing. Collisions have been a hazard on campus to Massive Pink’s fledglings and her former mate; 13 of the 41 redtails noticed on the cam have been injured or killed as a result of collisions with buildings or constructions.
The bird-friendly fieldhouse development is simply the newest in a variety of bird-safety initiatives which have improved the campus surroundings for hawks and different birds. Impressed by the hawks, a bunch of Cornell employees, alumni, college students, and volunteers not too long ago created Bird-Friendly Cornell, a bunch that led the trouble to retrofit home windows and promote bird-friendly designs for brand new constructions.
Central to that effort have been Cynthia and Karel Sedlacek, who’ve been described by Cornell hawks followers because the birds’ guardian angels. The pair tracks the hawks in actual life and alerts campus officers when the birds face challenges or have been injured (see Inspired by Big Red, under). Buildings such because the Cornell Lab’s Imogene Powers Johnson Middle at Sapsucker Woods—in addition to Stocking Corridor, Atkinson Corridor, and bus shelters on campus—now characteristic protecting measures (reminiscent of window cords or fritted glass) that cut back the chance of chicken collisions.
Eldermire says he’s grateful that if the Pink-tailed Hawks come again once more this spring, they’ll be coming to a campus that’s safer for nesting and elevating younger. Massive Pink turns 23 years previous in 2026, he says—fairly spectacular on condition that wild Pink-tailed Hawks usually reside 10 to fifteen years.
“Every of those years that we’ve got left [with Big Red],” he says, “you’ll be able to’t take as a right.”
Impressed by Massive Pink
Cynthia Sedlacek says that if a colleague hadn’t advised her concerning the Pink‑tailed Hawk cam greater than a decade in the past, she wouldn’t be the birdwatcher and photographer she is at the moment.
“[The hawks] are completely wonderful,” Cynthia says. “We at all times wish to root for them.”
For her and her husband, Karel, that introduction to the cams marked the start of a deep connection to the hawks. Earlier than lengthy, the couple was not solely watching the birds on-line, but in addition monitoring them in actual life with cameras and scopes, sharing what they noticed with others. The younger birds, particularly, mesmerized the couple.
“They’re very gregarious,” Karel says. “They don’t thoughts being round you. Should you begin a relationship with them, they’re truly very playful. We’ve had some very particular moments with them. They’re very harmless, very stunning and charming.”
When Cynthia and Karel discovered about plans for the brand new fieldhouse, they anxious it’d grow to be one other hazard in an already city surroundings. However as development progressed, they watched as crews took cautious steps to guard the hawks and make the location secure.
As we speak, the couple nonetheless follows Massive Pink and her fledglings after they go away the nest. With the hawks already working on their nest for spring 2026, the couple says they’ll as soon as once more be watching by way of the cam and round campus, witnessing the bonds they kind and the resilience they present in a altering panorama.
“It’s simply unbelievable,” Cyndi mentioned, “the tales that they’ve taught all of us. It’s a present, and actually, it’s a privilege.”
