Duos of the Month: Department of Biology, Office of Campus Sustainability engage in joint effort to highlight campus biodiversity

January 30, 2025 Mallika Rao

*January Duo of the Month: Red-tailed Hawk and White Pine Tree*

Coykendall Science Building Greenhouse Manager and Biology Lecturer Laura Wyeth, Zoe Marks ’25 (Biology) and the Office of Campus Sustainability are proud to announce the Biodiversity of SUNY New Paltz project, an interdepartmental collaboration that seeks to identify, catalogue and celebrate the incredible variety of interrelated organisms that live here on our beautiful campus.

This project’s biggest feature is the Duos-of-the-Month series, which highlights this diversity by sharing a pair of organisms found on campus for each month of the year. Each duo has a well-established relationship in the campus ecosystem – some of these organisms are friends, some are foes, and everything in-between.

The Duo of the Month for January is the red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamacensis) and white pine tree (Pinus strobus). Learn more about these organisms by visiting the University’s iNaturalist project page.

Red-tailed hawks are the SUNY New Paltz mascot for good reason – they can often be seen on campus, soaring overhead with their 56-inch wingspan. These are predatory birds that like to perch on high structures and in tall trees with good visibility, such as white pine trees.

White pines can be identified by their leaves with their bundles of 5 needles that are 3 to 5 inches long. The white pine trees on campus are among our tallest trees- they can grow up to 100 feet tall- making them an ideal place for hawks to perch and nest. White pines also have a characteristic horizontal branching pattern that provides a sturdy base for the large nests of red-tailed hawks.

Over the years we have had multiple nesting pairs and many generations of red-tailed hawks living alongside us on campus. An old red-tailed hawk nest can still be seen in one of the white pines in Parker Quad!

To learn more about the incredible biodiversity on campus, watch out for February’s Duo of the Month, visit our Biodiversity of SUNY New Paltz catalogue on iNaturalist.org, and stay tuned for a future campus biodiversity walking tour.