Hawk baby drama

[daphnep]

The short version: one of the hawks tried to fly before she was ready, and had to be rescued, but it all turned out okay because so many people were watching them, cheering them on, that they caught her distress before it turned into a tragedy.

I'll link you to the Inquirer story here:

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/20090607_Baby_hawk_rescued_after_trying_to_fly.html

and a blog retelling here from one of the active participants on the Franklin Institute's website:
http://sunnydixie.blogspot.com/

(I think this was the woman we met, watching the nest on the Parkway last week.)

and give you a picture of the hawk, here:






She'll be rehabilitated with a foster hawk-mama and released into a wilderness area where she won't have to compete for territory or resources. And where I won't be able to watch her from my desktop, but oh, well. We get the others, right here in town, any time we want to see them.

Speaking of which, Dan sees them every day, flying around, because he works on the Parkway. On Saturday (the same day the one fledgling needed rescuing) he was walking with our friend Kim and they were buzzed by a low-flying hawklet, so low they could feel the rush of air on their heads and shoulders. The "babies" whirl and climb and plunge and do stunt manoeuvers, and are really strong flyers.

Comments

[artemis77.livejournal.com]

I saw that note on the page today. It's good that she's home. I saw how they rehabbed hawks at the wildlife rehab here on Cape Cod, though, and either way would have been good. The hawks had very large outdoor enclosures so they could fly around - and they were given live prey to catch. Hawk preschool.

That guy who caught the hawk while wearing no protective gear was amazing (and slightly crazy - though I guess he had no time). I heard stories of people who were experienced with wildlife and one day they don't wear their goggles and almost lose an eye...

[daphnep.livejournal.com]

I love that people are adding in more and more information. In particular, I appreciate this assessment, from a raptor guy in Ohio, John Blakeman:

The Franklin Institute haggards [adult hawks] are superb...You people are right where the NYC folks were back in the 90s when Pale Male began his many years of breeding there at Central Park. But you've got it so much better. Your nest is so much closer to the earth, and it has the nest cam that reveals the most personal parts of incubation, pipping (cracking of the eggs), hatching, feeding, and all the rest of what's required to fledge a nest full of eyasses.

Now I've been studying wild red-tails since 1969, from Alaska and The West, to Hawk Mountain to the north of Philadelphia, and mostly in my native area of northern Ohio. But I learned more about the nuanced details of nesting and eyass-raising with The Franklin Institute nest this year than any of the dozens of ones I've studied in the wild. The nest cam provided views of things that were otherwise impossible to see and record.

This wasn't just a pair of hawks raising some "chicks." Much more than that. Here was a pair of wild red-tails that elected to come into the heart of one of America's great cities and raise a brood of eyasses there.

[artemis77.livejournal.com]

It's so cool what one nest has done.