On Tuesday night, wildlife rehabilitator Bob Horvath announced that New York City’s beloved Pale Male, widely known as the most-famous red-tailed hawk in the world, had died. “I’m sorry to have to report the end of an era that Pale Male passed away tonight in our care,” Horvath wrote in a Facebook post. According to Horvath, on Monday morning, a New York City park ranger found Pale Male “sick and grounded in Central Park.” Horvath took Pale Male to the vet, and then to his home, where he passed. The cause of his death is still unknown. 

“He lived at least 30 years in a challenging environment that NYC poses and there will never be another hawk as well known and loved as he was,” Horvath wrote of Pale Male. 

But did he live “at least 30 years”? Was it Pale Male who died on Tuesday, or a similarly colored pale red-tailed hawk, perhaps one of his many offspring?

In 2015, Corey Finger, a New York City birder and writer for the website 10,000 Birds, made a shocking claim: It’s time, Finger wrote, “that the birding community, particularly the New York City birding community, acknowledge the inevitable: Pale Male is dead.” 

Finger ticked off several reasons that it would be sensible to assume that the hawk known as Pale