Rescuers hope hawks return for chick
01:00 AM EDT on Wednesday, May 30, 2007
By C. Eugene Emery Jr.
Found at: http://www.projo.com/news/content/hawk30_05-30-07_BQ5R09F.327c27c.html
Journal Staff Writer
BARRINGTON -- The baby bird is back.
One week after being inadvertently knocked from its nest when groundskeepers took down a dying pine tree at the Rhode Island Country Club, a three-week-old red-tailed hawk was placed in a makeshift nest yesterday afternoon in hopes that its parents will find it again.
With one red-tailed hawk spotted circling the golf course further to the north, Vivian Maxson of Born to Be Wild Nature Center in Westerly, who cared for the chick during the past week, said the odds that the parents would find the baby were “one hundred percent.”
“There should be no reason not to come back,” she said. Hawks, like other raptors, “are such good parents.”
Two other chicks in the nest were killed after the tree was cut down May 22.
Greens superintendent Peter Lund, who felled the tree, only to discover — to his horror — that the three babies were nesting there, installed the new nest in an adjacent tree using a 3-foot-square wooden pallet. Before the chick was brought by truck, he was placing fresh pine branches needles in the nest.
And when it arrived, it was Lund who stepped precariously among the branches to place the chick in its new home.
He then nailed protective aluminum flashing around the tree to keep raccoons from climbing and killing the chick.
Maxson said the animals are the number-one killers of baby hawks.
About 15 minutes later, the chick could be seen peering out of the makeshift nest.
“This is a good substitute nest,” Maxson said. And the chick seemed to thrive in captivity, eating about a dozen chopped-up mice on Monday. “She’s well fed. She’ll be fine at least until tomorrow morning.”
Originally, the plan was the care for the chick until it could fly. “But when I saw how young it was, I said, ‘No. We’ll have to put it back,’ ” she said.
The chick was placed by hand. Maxson said the idea that mothers will abandon a chick that has been in contact with humans is wrong. With the exception of vultures, who need a keen sense of smell to detect carrion, “birds will never know you have handled them. They have no sense of smell.”
This chick did well, she said, because it spent most of the week in the presence of adult red-tailed hawk located at the nature center.
Red-tailed hawks, which are Rhode Island’s largest year-round birds, take about eight weeks to grow to adult height. With a wingspan of 43 to 57 inches, they usually learn to fly after six or seven weeks, but remain dependent on their parents for the much of the summer. Because they love to hunt from a perch, they frequent open areas. They can often be seen perched on light poles along highways.
Their lifespan is 25 to 30 years in captivity, or about a decade in the wild, Maxson said.
By C. Eugene Emery Jr.
Found at: http://www.projo.com/news/content/hawk30_05-30-07_BQ5R09F.327c27c.html
Journal Staff Writer
BARRINGTON -- The baby bird is back.
One week after being inadvertently knocked from its nest when groundskeepers took down a dying pine tree at the Rhode Island Country Club, a three-week-old red-tailed hawk was placed in a makeshift nest yesterday afternoon in hopes that its parents will find it again.
With one red-tailed hawk spotted circling the golf course further to the north, Vivian Maxson of Born to Be Wild Nature Center in Westerly, who cared for the chick during the past week, said the odds that the parents would find the baby were “one hundred percent.”
“There should be no reason not to come back,” she said. Hawks, like other raptors, “are such good parents.”
Two other chicks in the nest were killed after the tree was cut down May 22.
Greens superintendent Peter Lund, who felled the tree, only to discover — to his horror — that the three babies were nesting there, installed the new nest in an adjacent tree using a 3-foot-square wooden pallet. Before the chick was brought by truck, he was placing fresh pine branches needles in the nest.
And when it arrived, it was Lund who stepped precariously among the branches to place the chick in its new home.
He then nailed protective aluminum flashing around the tree to keep raccoons from climbing and killing the chick.
Maxson said the animals are the number-one killers of baby hawks.
About 15 minutes later, the chick could be seen peering out of the makeshift nest.
“This is a good substitute nest,” Maxson said. And the chick seemed to thrive in captivity, eating about a dozen chopped-up mice on Monday. “She’s well fed. She’ll be fine at least until tomorrow morning.”
Originally, the plan was the care for the chick until it could fly. “But when I saw how young it was, I said, ‘No. We’ll have to put it back,’ ” she said.
The chick was placed by hand. Maxson said the idea that mothers will abandon a chick that has been in contact with humans is wrong. With the exception of vultures, who need a keen sense of smell to detect carrion, “birds will never know you have handled them. They have no sense of smell.”
This chick did well, she said, because it spent most of the week in the presence of adult red-tailed hawk located at the nature center.
Red-tailed hawks, which are Rhode Island’s largest year-round birds, take about eight weeks to grow to adult height. With a wingspan of 43 to 57 inches, they usually learn to fly after six or seven weeks, but remain dependent on their parents for the much of the summer. Because they love to hunt from a perch, they frequent open areas. They can often be seen perched on light poles along highways.
Their lifespan is 25 to 30 years in captivity, or about a decade in the wild, Maxson said.
