Laura Erickson's For the Birds

(I know I aired this on this date, but don’t know for sure if it was a repeat.)

Red-tailed Hawks don’t have many opportunities to observe human homes at close range, and don’t consider it much of a privilege when they do. People are just too unpredictable and erratic for a hawk to relate to.

Last week, a woman called me from Floodwood with an injured Red-tail she and her husband found in one of their farm fields. The bird apparently had been shot, and by the time it was discovered, it was so weak and emaciated that she just picked it up with her bare hands and put it in a box. Then she was faced with the problem of what to do with a hawk in a box.

Lately when people have called Minnesota DNR game wardens with injured hawks, the wardens have instructed them to kill the birds. Fortunately, this woman called the University of Minnesota-Duluth biology department. They gave her mu number, and I went out and picked it up that night.

Now I am a licensed bird rehabilitator, but I don’t consider myself qualified to deal with hawks. I could practice on a few, to get experience, but it would hardly be fair to the hawks when Minnesota has what is probably the finest raptor center in the whole world right in St. Paul. So when I get a hawk or owl, I don’t keep it—I take it to Dave and Molly Evans, the hawk researchers at Hawk Ridge. They give the bird expert first aid and feed it from their supply of frozen mice. But they don’t keep hawks long. As soon as they can, they bring all their injured birds down to the Raptor Center.

When I got home from Floodwood with this Red-tail, it was too late at night to bring the bird to Molly and Dave. So after I checked it over and saw how lethargic and weak it was, I spoon-fed it some sugar water. Gatorade or boiled coke would have been better, but we didn’t have any on hand. I also fed it a small piece of raw, lean hamburger. Hamburger and other kinds of beef are awful food for hawks—they need whole dead birds or mice, but I didn’t have any handy.

The sugar water apparently helped restore the bird’s electrolyte levels because after a half hour or so it perked up and set upon a plan of action. It decided to kill me, or to die trying. Of course, I’ve watched experienced hawk handlers enough to know how to avoid its talons, and since it was perky now, I pretty much left it alone. I did spend a little time just looking at it, sitting there on a log in a box in the bathtub. It was a gorgeous adult, with a rich red tail, a lot of rufous feathers on its back, and a beautiful white breast lightly streaked with chocolate feathers. It glared defiantly at me when I offered it more sugar water. It couldn’t resist taking a drink, but kept its eyes fixed steadily on me, as if daring me to mess with him. As soon as he looked like he was going to survive the night, I left him alone to rest in the darkness.

My kids woke in the morning to a Red-tailed Hawk sitting in the tub watching them brush their teeth. They probably would have enjoyed keeping him there a while longer—even notwithstanding the sheer novelty of it, a hawk in the tub would make a wonderful excuse to stop taking baths for a while. But they reluctantly agreed that the bird deserved better veterinary care than we could give it, and a chance to be released into the wild. After all, Red-tailed Hawks look much finer in the blue sky than they do in a bathtub.