They gathered on Oct. 19 for a ritual known to thousands of New York co-op owners, the annual meeting. The board president, Richard Cohen, and his wife, the newscaster Paula Zahn, threw open their second-floor apartment overlooking Central Park for the occasion. Quickly, the discussion focused on a huge and untidy red-tailed hawk, known famously as Pale Male, which had been nesting on the building's facade for a decade.

The building, 927 Fifth Avenue, is among the city's most sumptuous - apartments behind the neo-Italian renaissance facade occupy entire floors, or two, and are worth well over $10 million. The roughly 10 people at the meeting included Robert A. Belfer, the founder of Belco Oil & Gas and a former director of the Enron Corporation; Dr. Robert Schwager, a plastic surgeon with offices on the ground floor; and Dr. Robert Levine, a Manhattan cardiologist who is married to Mary Tyler Moore.

Some shareholders had long complained about Pale Male and his mate, Lola, whose nest of twigs and small branches had grown to eight feet across a cornice outside the building's 12th floor.

The hawks were hardly hygienic, preying on pigeons and rats, sometimes dropping bloody carcasses on the roof or sidewalk. And bird watchers were constantly looking up with their cameras and high-powered binoculars.

The nest, board members said, had to go. There would be no vote among shareholders. Several people familiar with the discussions said it was Mr. Cohen who had headed the effort, even though his wife had once proclaimed her affection for the birds on television.

The building's management company, Brown Harris Stevens Property Management, had warned of a public backlash. "We told Richard it would be extremely controversial," said Noreen McKenna, a Brown Harris Stevens agent who serves as secretary to the board.

The story of Pale Male, how he came to live at one of Manhattan's most exclusive addresses and then was sent away, is one of wealth and fame meeting nature and instinct, of an obscure international treaty researched and clarified, and of anger among those who live in an elegant building where, Ms. Moore now says, relations have become frosty.

Pale Male had adopted Central Park as his home and feeding ground, had prospered for 11 years, siring 23 hawks, and no one knows whether he will rebuild a nest and stay, or simply fly away.

At the very least, his predicament serves as a reminder of an immutable force, perhaps peculiar to New York City: the power of a co-op board.

At the meeting, Dr. Levine stood up to object, but not on his own behalf.

"Dr. Levine was vocal," recalled Dr. Schwager, who described the Oct. 19 meeting. Neither he nor Dr. Levine is on the board. "He said, 'I can tell you categorically that Mary Tyler Moore is opposed to this.' "

Dr. Schwager joined in: "I said 'This will cause a major commotion in New York if you do this.' "

Both doctors were right.

Since workers removed the nest on Tuesday, dangling on a window-washing platform and shoving Pale Male's carefully foraged twigs into garbage bags, the building has been the focus of searing anger from those around the city and nation who saw the hawk as an emblem of raw nature and perseverance in a densely populated urban setting. Bird lovers have camped outside, held vigils and chanted in anger, occasionally joined by Ms. Moore.

Both Pale Male and Lola have been observed circling their cornice, and landing with bits of twigs and tree branches in what appeared to experts on the ground as a futile attempt to rebuild. Their nest-building may be stymied because metal spikes that held their previous nest in place have also been removed.

Mr. Cohen, a real estate developer, spoke publicly about the matter for the first time yesterday and defended the co-op, on the corner of East 74th Street. "Every year this became more problematic," he said of the nest, calling the decision the result of a consensus and flatly denying he had railroaded it through.

He called the eviction a "last resort" and said that board members believed the birds would thrive elsewhere, and quickly. "It takes a week to 10 days to rebuild a nest. Trees fall in nature. They lose nests. They are resilient animals."

Also yesterday, Maureen Wren, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Environmental Conservation, said the agency was working with the New York City Audubon Society to protect the hawks and determining whether any state laws had been violated.

The Audubon Society said that the co-op board has agreed to meet with it on Monday to discuss options. Possibilities include replacement of the spikes on the ledge or the construction of a platform elsewhere on the building's exterior.

Last night, about 40 hawk supporters gathered in the rain bearing photographs of the hawks and a placard that read "Honk 4 Hawks." Ms. Moore, whose apartment is for sale for $18.5 million, was skeptical about the prospects for an amicable resolution. "These are not reversible type people," she said of her fellow apartment owners. "They just don't want the birds here."

Said Dr. Schwager, "This building is unbelievably conservative and reserved. I think, should we all buy lottery tickets, there is a better chance we would win."

The eviction of Pale Male was long in coming, and had been tried once before. The hawk's longevity in his co-op nest was due primarily to a federal environmental treaty, signed by the United States, Canada, Russia, and other nations in 1918, that was intended to protect the habitats of several species of migratory birds, including red-tailed hawks, from poachers who sought birds for food or for their feathers.

The treaty, administered by the federal Fish and Wildlife Service, was invoked in 1993 when the board of 927 Fifth Avenue removed Pale Male's nest for the first time. The removal came only months after the hawk had built the nest on his 12th-floor cornice, and his mate at the time had tried unsuccessfully to hatch eggs.

Marie Winn, a bird watcher and author, whose 1998 book about Pale Male and his offspring, "Red-Tails in Love," became the basis for a public television documentary, was one of those who jumped to the hawks' defense in 1993. "They put up a scaffolding and took the nest down in a plastic bag," she said. "I got the workers to hand it over to me. I put in my bicycle basket, and took it to a secret place in the park."

Then, she said, she contacted officials of the Fish and Wildlife Service, who concluded that removing the nest violated the 1918 treaty.

The federal agency "put fear and trembling into their hearts" at 927 Fifth Avenue, Ms. Winn said. Board members at the co-op "promised to never remove it again, although they have always wanted to," she said.

Their opportunity arrived in April 2003, when the federal agency issued what it called a "clarification" to the migratory bird treaty. Instead of a complete ban on the removal or destruction of nests, it said the nests were protected only when they were being used to hatch or raise offspring.

The law "does not contain any prohibitions that applies to the destruction of a migratory bird nest alone (without birds or eggs)," said a memorandum spelling out the rule.

Federal officials said this week that the clarification was intended to ensure that different species are treated uniformly, and some of the birds, like robins, simply abandon their nests after their chicks are raised.

On Dec. 9, 2003, Ms. McKenna submitted an application, with photographs, to the Fish and Wildlife Service to remove Pale Male's nest. "The nest has caused deterioration of the building's canopy from bird droppings," she wrote. "In addition, the hawks bring live prey to the nest where it is killed and torn for feeding." She said the result was a danger of contamination, Lyme disease and West Nile virus.

The application included a report by James E. McCosker, a building engineer who inspected the building. He described the nest as "massive," and said it posed a danger to pedestrians because it was directly above the building's entrance.

"This ain't a regular nest," Mr. McCosker said in an interview. "How would you like to have a bird's nest 8 feet long and 3 feet wide overhanging the edge of the building by a foot?"

On April 30, Fish and Wildlife Service officials responding in writing, saying that no permit was needed to remove the nest.

"We had no knowledge that this was a famous pair of birds," said Diane Pence, the chief of the agency's division of migratory birds for the northeastern states, in an interview on Thursday.

"It was just an address in New York City to us," she said, but added that the position of the agency would not have been different if the nest was in a less prominent location.

Then came the October meeting, and finally, on Tuesday, workers came to take the nest down.

Lincoln Karim, a 43-year-old engineer who has been among the most diligent bird watchers in tracking Pale Male and his offspring (at the Web site www.palemale.com), said he saw it happen at 2:30 p.m.

After workers hung a window-washing style rigging from the roof of 927 Fifth Avenue, "I thought maybe they were checking masonry." he said. "Then I saw they were taking the nest down and putting it into garbage bags."

He added, "I thought, 'I'm going to climb up ropes. I'm going to stop them.' But I looked up and saw the nest was gone. It was just gone."

Other than Ms. Moore and Dr. Schwager, residents of the 11 apartments in the building have declined to be interviewed, among them Bruce Wasserstein, the Wall Street deal maker, and Ms. Zahn, who had referred to Pale Male in a 2001 segment of "The Edge with Paula Zahn," on Fox News Channel. She was interviewing two naturalists, one of whom commented on the problems associated with people feeding wild animals, and Ms. Zahn seemed eager to offer a glimpse of her personal life. "Well, guess what lives on my building, you two, a red-tailed hawk," she said. "It eats rats and pigeons on our block."

"I like the hawk," she said. "I am just not going to feed it."

But these days Pale Male is a sore subject among the residents of 927 Fifth Avenue. Mr. Cohen said Ms. Moore had not even mentioned the hawk when they had a friendly conversation at a recent party. She said she had been too upset to talk about it. The topic is largely off-limits when residents cross paths, she said. "We are playing the game of the elephant in the middle of the living room."

Janon Fisher contributed reporting for this article.

A day after his nest was removed from the facade of a Fifth Avenue co-op building, the intrepid red-tailed hawk known as Pale Male tried to rebuild yesterday, carrying mounds of twigs from Central Park in what experts said might be a futile attempt to reclaim his home of 11 years.

"This looks like a Sisyphean task," said Adrian Benepe, the city's parks commissioner, who was one of dozens of people who stopped by the edge of the park at East 74th Street yesterday to watch Pale Male and his mate, Lola. Despite the hawks' instinctive nest building, he said, their twigs would probably blow away because a network of steel spikes that held the previous nest in place had also been removed.

With the fate of the red-tailed hawks uncertain, federal officials said yesterday that the co-op at 927 Fifth Avenue, where Pale Male has occupied a 12th floor cornice since 1993, was authorized to remove the nest, despite the angry recriminations from naturalists and bird watchers.

A lawyer for the co-op, Aaron Shmulewitz, said in an interview that the nest had been taken away on the advice of the building's engineer, who concluded that it violated city health and safety laws. But a spokeswoman for the Department of Buildings, Ilyse Fink, responded with skepticism.

"They are trying to use city regulations as a rationale," Ms. Fink said. "If there was a valid public safety concern, we wouldn't say, 'Take the nest down.' We'd say, 'Make it safe.' "

Late yesterday, about 25 people gathered across Fifth Avenue from the co-op building for a vigil called by the local chapter of the Audubon Society. They called on its residents to return the hawks' nest to its roost.

"We have gotten a tremendous amount of e-mails from people who want to see the nest brought back," said E. J. McAdams, executive director of the group, New York City Audubon. "We thought this was the most expedient thing to do," he said, adding that the group had "very little success getting through" to the co-op's board or residents.

"Pale Male is an ambassador of the wild in New York City," Mr. McAdams said. "We would like to see the building have a change of heart."

When he arrived at the building in 1993 and built his nest, Pale Male brought an unlikely wildlife habitat that attracted bird lovers from around the world. The sight of a brightly colored hawk with wings that span more than four feet presiding over a nine-foot-wide nest in the middle of Manhattan was one hard to duplicate.

And Pale Male became a celebrity. The subject of a book and public television documentary, he sired 23 youngsters from the nest that was removed on Tuesday, and became "the most famous red-tailed hawk in the world," Mr. Benepe said.

But some residents of the building have long been known to consider the huge hawks, which prey on pigeons and rats, a nuisance. Mr. Shmulewitz said yesterday that the hawks had brought "torn and bleeding animal carcasses" to the building's roof and sidewalk.

Until recently, the nest was protected by a federal treaty, first enacted in 1918 and administered by the Fish and Wildlife Service, which prevented the destruction of nests in migratory bird habitats. But Terri Edwards, a spokeswoman for the Fish and Wildlife Service, said yesterday that the agency had issued a clarification of the rules in 2003 that allows the destruction of migratory bird nests if it is done during a season when the nests are not being used to hatch or raise offspring.

Ms. Edwards said a representative of the building had contacted her agency and obtained permission before the nest was removed on Tuesday.

Pale Male's fate is a matter of intense speculation by ornithologists and bird watchers.

"He will try to rebuild, but as things keep sliding off the cornice, he will be unsuccessful," said Nancy Clum, assistant curator of ornithology at the Bronx Zoo.

"He may stay in the area, in a tree or on another building, or he may just pick up and leave," she said.

Mr. McAdams said the chances were good that Pale Male would remain as close as possible.

"Red-tailed hawks have a great fidelity to the nest," he said. "He has been very successful in that nest over the last 10 years, and he will want to stay as close as possible."

Mr. Benepe said he would be happy to see Pale Male pick a tree in Central Park for his new nest, but added that the prospect was not good because red-tailed hawks prefer the stability of building facades to tree limbs, which sway in the wind. He said he would encourage building owners in Manhattan to provide platforms that might be claimed by Pale Male or other red-tailed hawks in search of a safe place.

Janon Fisher contributed reporting for this article.