Curious Case of the Nest in the Nighttime

Pale Male subject of new documentary By [Leslie Stonebraker ] In December 2004, the co-op board of 927 Fifth Ave. silently dismantled the nest of two red-tailed hawks that perched above an ornate window. They were tired of the attention of an increasing number of bird watchers dedicated to following the patriarch, dubbed Pale Male, as he found mates and raised chicks next to Central Park. The international uproar that followed was deafening. Pale Male and current mate Lola made nearly every newspaper, even joining Conan O" Brien on late-night television. Two weeks after the nest was removed, the building caved to demands and replaced the spikes that had held the nest in place with a custom-built cradle. But before there was a controversy, there was a bird. The first red-tailed hawk spotted in New York City in decades, and the first one to choose to nest in a building rather than a tree, Pale Male was certainly not your typical bird of a feather. His journey, and that of the birders who avidly watched him, is the subject of Frederic Lilien"s second documentary, The Legend of Pale Male, which recently opened at the Angelika Film Center. Our Town: How did you come to make this film? Frederic Lilien: I was really coming out of this very naive idea that I could become a wildlife filmmaker. My big idea was that I had no competition here because nobody else posed as one in New York City. I"m just so lucky to have Pale Male, who decided to live so long. I mean, he"s 19 years old and he could have died within six months and my story would have been over. It"s pretty much amazing that the story just got better and better over the years. I basically just had to follow him, you know, and see what was happening. Were you the first to make a sighting of Pale Male? No. There"s a very large community of birders in Central Park, which is the mecca of bird watching in the area. So, it in fact was the writer Marie Winn, who wrote the book Red-tails in Love. She is the one who gave him his name. Why was this bird so important to you and to the community? We all need a good metaphor. And in a way, that"s what Pale Male is. It"s only in New York. He came against all odds, he was the first one, and he made it. That"s just one aspect. The other, of course, is the pure beauty of the animal and what he represents. Just seeing him fly is a thing of beauty and freedom. We live in New York with all of its complexity, and everything he is, he"s doing right in front of us. Pale Male seems to have inspired almost religious experiences among his followers. Was this due to timing, place, or unexpected wildness within the city? It"s a bit of all of that. The setting, it was like theater. This nest, this arch with the angels, and you being able to sit down on a bench in Central Park and have a full view of what is happening: the growing of the babies, them catching pigeons right in front of you. You would sit on a bench, look at it, and then you would start talking to the person on your left, on your right, whoever they were. That beauty makes you a different person, makes you a more open-minded, maybe a better person. What is the goal of The Legend of Pale Male? I didn"t start out as a filmmaker. I guess I just wanted to follow the story and film the story. It"s a beautiful, simple story. I am amazed that people all over the world are enjoying it. The first film I did was shown in 75 countries, and this one is showing fairly well in festivals. It"s certainly not a traditional white knight thing at all, but it allows us to express what people feel. The beauty is that now Pale Male is taught in schools. All the kids, they come to see Pale Male, they see the film, they learn about it. He"s a great communicator.