The Rescue of a Hawk by Gail Jensen Sanford

Photo by Juliane McAdam

They gather, an hour before sunset, tall, thin, beaky, the bones of their faces caught between the soft beauty of youth and the harder surfaces of maturity. Standing on stork legs, murmuring to each other, making short curving practice loops. At some signal, invisible from my kitchen window, the skateboarders set off, weaving across the road, descending into gravity, released into a human approximation of flight.

To these boys I am probably just another nearly invisible old lady. We co-exist in space, but occupy separate realities. That is, until two days after Christmas, when I return from some errands, and drive up the hill just in time to see a young man set aside his skateboard to cross the street and climb directly up into one of the Cypress trees in my front yard. It has never occurred to me that the tree could be climbed. I stop the car and ask one of his friends if I should drive around the block and pretend I don’t live there. He replies, “We just saw a bird fall into the tree.”

So I pull my car into the driveway and walk back to look into the foliage, but I don’t see much of either bird or rescuer. The boys tell me that the bird is tied with some kind of leash and ask for a sharp knife to cut it free. I’m so rattled the only sharp knife I can think of in my kitchen is a long bread knife with a serrated edge, but eventually I remember that I have a pair of scissors that lock so they can be safely carried into the tree by a second skateboarder. The boys have no gloves, and are wearing shorts and bare-legs in this strangely hot December weather, but they climb that tree as easily as if there were a ladder. I go back in the house to call County Animal Control on my phone, but I am put on hold, and it is almost 4:00 on a weekend between holidays. I call 911 and they tell me to call Pacific Wildlife Care in Morro Bay. Of course, I knew that. I call the number and listen to a very long informative message, then leave my phone number explaining that there is a bird in my tree who needs to be rescued. I have little confidence that the boys will be able to capture the hawk.

A third skateboarder, the tallest of the three, is taking photos with his Smart Phone as the first climber gets far enough out on a branch to reach the bird. A sudden movement and the hawk is hanging upside down in the branches on its tether. I stand on the ground and call out, “Please don’t fall out of my tree!” and a voice from the unseen rescuer assures me he won’t. Then the boy moves further out onto a more slender branch toward where the hawk is hanging. I go into my garage to get a cat carrier, and return to see the rescuers on the ground holding the bird. The hawk stands in the middle of the street looking through somewhat ruffled brown feathers from its own separate sphere of existence. But it seems to me that it knows that it is being helped.

My neighbor, Colleen, comes up the hill with a small towel and tells the boys to use it to cover the bird’s eyes to calm it, as if it were the kind of hood that is used in falconry. She later explains that she has a cousin who used to raise hawks, so she has a little experience. I offer a larger towel, and the boys and Colleen get the bird mostly into the carrier, except for one wing that won’t fold, so they can’t close the latch. “Just get it into the car and take it to Pacific Wildlife,” I instruct them. “They closed at 4:00, but there might still be someone there.” It is about 4:05 p.m. I tell them there’s a back route into the power plant site where their facility is located, on a road near the start of the bicycle path. “Let me get you the phone number,” I say to the tall skateboarder with the Smart Phone. “That’s okay,” he replies, “I’ll get it off of the Internet.” Of course he will.

I didn’t see that the bird tried to fly again when the boys moved it into the car, but I watch as they drive off in three separate vehicles. The rescuers have promised to return my carrier and let me know what happens. Still, I’m surprised when the doorbell rings around 5:30 p.m. and one of the young men stands there with my cat carrier and towel. “Was anyone there at Pacific Wildlife?” I ask, and he tells me the astonishing fact that it was their bird. “It escaped when they were exercising it.” He moves back into the darkness and his own social network, leaving me with feelings of relief mixed with the reflection that maybe our generation will be leaving the world in good hands, after all.

The next day, I go to Pacific Wildlife Care to try to learn more. The rescued bird is a female Red-tailed Hawk with a shoulder injury, and they have no idea how she got free when they were exercising her. “We always double-check the creance lines and attachment. Now we are checking and re-checking multiple times.” They had been hoping she had been able to get out of the leash, as with it tied to her legs she would not have been able to hunt. “She is thin, but okay. We put her back in the pen with two other hawks. She had just started to eat again when she got away.” The hawk had been free for almost two weeks.

I remember that the teenaged girl across the street had told me there was what she thought was an owl in my tree a couple of days before Christmas, but my only concern then was that I keep an eye on my indoor cat when I take her outside for twenty minutes every day to eat some grass and roll in the dirt.

Later I talk to Virginia Flaherty, the volunteer who was exercising the hawk when she flew away. “I was training another volunteer, and she saw me checking the creance lines,” she tells me. “The only thing we can think of is that the leash is flat and it somehow slipped through the clasp. We’ve changed the equipment to make sure this doesn’t happen again.” Virginia offers to call me in a week or so when the hawk has recovered enough from her injury and has gained enough weight to be released back into the wild. “We take the birds back to the area where they were rescued originally. She was found in San Luis Obispo.” My Cypress trees are directly southeast from the power plant on Black Hill, so it seems clear to me that the hawk was heading in the direction of home. I can imagine how it will be to watch her released from human captivity, as she rises into the sky without looking back and begins to soar above the Irish Hills.

But that is not what happens.

On Sunday, February 9, after a week of on and off rain, twenty or so Pacific Wildlife Care volunteers and friends gather in the KSBY parking lot, above Highway 101 and Los Osos Valley Road, near where the hawk had been found in October. Virginia Flaherty has the hawk in a plastic carrier and she waits for the group to assemble before carrying it to the side of the lot facing toward the Irish Hills. Everyone is excited to see the completion of the recovery process in the release of the hawk. Virginia says two more hawks will be released this week as they want to get them out there for the mating season.

She explains that the hawk has gained weight and her crop is full, so she won’t need to hunt for few days as she re-adapts to the territory. Virginia puts on thick gloves before taking the hawk out of the carrier and holding her for a minute for observers to see and take photos. Then she releases the hawk. I am too busy trying to take a photograph to see much of the hawk’s flight. But I will be able to observe her for the next fifteen or twenty minutes as the Red-tailed Hawk flies only about 100 yards to a power pole and alights in a slightly sheltered position near the top. And stays there facing back towards us. She is in limbo between the human world and her return to the wild.

Virginia identifies a hawk’s call. Another Red-tailed Hawk is in the vicinity, and there are two turkey vultures circling. Virginia tells us about released hawk whose mate had waited in the area where it was rescued and they found each other immediately. This hawk continues to sit on the power pole. Then a turkey vulture lands on the top of the pole and spreads its wings. Time passes in which we all appreciate anew the collapsed time in television nature shows. The volunteers spread out among the array of satellite dishes on the hilltop trying to get a little closer to the hawk’s position, waiting in vain to watch her take flight. Then the humans begin to drift back to their cars. When I leave, Virginia and a few other are maintaining the vigil. But an hour later I return to an empty parking lot. The released Red-tailed Hawk has disappeared into nature.