The Miracle Hawk (from April 2009)

The Miracle Hawk

The call came in on a Sunday afternoon: a hawk on the ground. As always, on my way to pick it up, I wondered what I would encounter. Would it even be a hawk? One is never sure of anything when going on these calls. We’ve gone out on hawk calls before and had it turn out to be a quail, or a young blue jay, or a young pigeon… After driving about a mile and a half out a dead-end dirt road, I first came across three people and two dogs next to a stream. It turned out to be the woman who had called about the hawk, her young daughter and son, and their two large and rambunctious dogs. She pointed to where the bird was, and my first thought was “Wow, that is one huge hawk!” It was across a small field of weeds about a foot and a half high, but most of the bird’s body was above the tops of the weeds. As it turned out, it was a red-tailed hawk that was sitting on some rocks which were the same height as the weeds, so it made the bird look really tall. I asked the woman if she could have the dogs put away, which she readily did.

As I slowly approached the bird, she spread her wings, lifted the crest feathers on her head, and opened her beak in typical raptor defensive posture. But she was very weak and put up no resistance, falling over as I put the blanket over her. She had a nasty open and bleeding wound on her wing, and was very thin.

I rushed her to the clinic and got Mike Furtado to help me examine her from head to toe. We could find no other wound other than the wing wound, which was enough, as we could see a broken bone through the hole in her skin. She was thin and dehydrated, and after cleaning & disinfecting the wound, hydrating and medicating her, we left her to recover in a warm cage in the clinic.

Later that night, I lay in bed listening to the pouring rain. I was SO glad that the bird was safe and dry inside, instead of standing out in the field in the cold rain, slowly dying. I silently thanked the people who had cared enough to call us.

A few days later she was seen by Dr. Lund at Mother Lode Veterinary Hospital, who, after x-raying the wing, mended the break and pinned it with an “external fixator” on the outside of the wing to hold the bones in place while they healed. As usual with extreme cases, she was taken to Laurel and Eric’s for extra care. It was touch-and-go for about the first week – all of us holding our collective breaths waiting to see if she was even going to make it. She had to be force-fed, given 3 medications twice a day, and have the wound cleaned every day. Her wing was badly bruised – green and purple –the hole itself having been stitched closed by Dr. Lund. One night Laurel thought she had lost her when she found her lying on her side with her eyes closed.

Eventually, she began eating on her own, but was still very docile – something a wild raptor should never be. She was also found to have two different kinds of internal parasites, and had to be medicated for those, as well.

As the days went by, she slowly gained weight and grew a little stronger every day. She finally began showing some aggression when being handled – a great sign!

I saw her about three weeks to the day after picking her up. What a different bird! Her wing looked great, the bruising was gone and the skin coloring normal. The incision was healed, and Dr. Lund had removed part of the fixator earlier in the week. She was eating well and gaining weight. We put her in the flight cage to exercise and build up her flight muscles.
A few weeks later, we deemed her ready to go. I contacted the family who had called us about her, and they were excited to meet us back in the same spot she was found, to watch the release.
She had eaten well that morning at the clinic and had a full crop. One never knows quite how a release is going to go, and this one was a bit different.
As the small group of on-lookers watched, I stood at the edge of the field she was found in, and tossed her into the air, thinking she’d fly majestically away. She went about 2 feet and landed on the ground in front of me. I picked her up and tried again. This time she flew very low across the field and landed, wings askew, in a low bush on the other side of the little stream she had been found next to. I was a little bit concerned and wasn’t sure why she wasn’t flying away. I made my way across the field, plucked her out of the bush, looked her over, and tossed her into the air once again. This time she flew into a low tree branch. Later, I found out that when a raptor has a full crop like that, they just sit and wait until it gets digested, then they fly off.

Despite the undistinguished release, it was amazing that she even survived. She truly was a Miracle Bird.