Heard about this thing for the first time this morning. Here I thought the city’s only notable bird was the middle finger. (Ed. note: Heyoo!)

From the Wikipedia: Pale Male.

Pale Male is a Red-tailed hawk that has made his home in New York City since the early 1990s. He is the first of his species known to have built his nest in a building instead of a tree, and he has sired at least 26 chicks. He is named Pale Male because he is a male bird and he is pale.

I’m on the record as saying birds are pretty stupid, and I’ve never really understood birdwatching as a hobby. I mean, look: I like looking at birds because they can fly, which is awesome, and they’re colorful, which is nice too. When I see a blue jay or a cardinal in my backyard I’m all, “hey, look at that bird! It can fly and it’s colorful, and I can identify it because I recognize it from a baseball team’s logo.”

But then after I look at it for a little while, either the bird flies away or I go back to tending to my barbecue, because it’s highly unlikely the bird’s really going to do anything all that interesting. And after the bird leaves I’m never like, “damn, I wish I were still looking at that bird.”

Hawks and other birds of prey are clearly a different story, though. First of all, they’re called raptors, which is viciously badass. And I know I only think that because of the velociraptors from Jurassic Park, but whatever. Also, they’re birds that totally dominate other animals. Death from above.

When I was in Costa Rica I watched a hawk stalk a family of monkeys, then swoop in and grab a baby monkey. Monkeys are sweet so it was sad and all, but they’re also crazy dexterous even when they’re young, so that’s pretty impressive work by the hawk right there. Really some impressive nature all around.

Back to Pale Male: After being chased from Central Park by crows in 1991, he moved to a classy 5th Ave. apartment building, sort of a real-life rags to riches story. In his prime location on E. 74th St., overlooking the park, he has romanced four different mates.

In 2004, a group of chumps and suckers, obviously jealous of Pale Male’s remarkable virility, took down his nest and the anti-pigeon spikes upon which it was built. But it turned out Mary Tyler Moore lived in the building, and she and a group of birders protested until the co-op board agreed to install a new “cradle” for his nest.

Since then, there have been numerous accounts of other red-tailed hawks setting up camp on buildings around the city. Presumably many of them are Pale Male’s offspring. I will go ahead and assume this means the city’s going to eventually be overrun with a bunch of inbred hawks, which might be kind of awesome if you think about it.

Pale Male has been featured in a PBS Documentary, three children’s books, a Steve Earle song, and numerous Conan O’Brien sketches.