East Village hawk Dominatrix favors fancy NYU building over Tompkins Square

The East Village hawk known as The Dominatrix isn’t building a nest in Tompkins Square Park after all, but she may be the one now showing off her egg-sitting abilities to the world via a New York Times web cam.

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Everybody’s Watching Molly, the San Diego Owl, Hatch Her Family

Unbeknownst to Molly, a young barn owl mother, about 2 million people are scrutinizing her egg-sitting, feeding and every move, day and night, asking questions and offering critiques about every 30 seconds. Since January, when Molly moved into a backyard owl box in San Marcos, CA, the box’s landlords started adding progressively more advanced photo equipment, culminating in the live streaming camera at Ustream, which has had about 2 million views.

Viewers won’t be disappointed. Molly fusses over her eggs–and now two chicks–like a Park Slope parent. She incessantly gets up to rearrange herself, providing a glimpse of the chicks. Her mate arrives just after sunset with dinner–once a whole rabbit. 

A retired couple, Carlos and Donna Royal, have been waiting for just such a visitor for years. “We have a very eco-friendly backyard; we live on an acre lot with lots of trees and plants for wildlife,” they say in their Ustream profile. “We have had kestrels, bluebirds, hummingbirds, phoebes, wild ducks, killdeer and mockingbirds all nest and raise their young in our habitat. We do not have any cats or dogs to disturb the wildlife.”

Carlos, a former real estate broker,  told the San Diego Union-Tribune that they put up the house two years ago, but got no tenants. Then in January a neighbor asked if they heard the owls screeching in a storm. With the help of their teenage grandson, they added a camera on the outside of the box, then an infrared

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