A kind neighbor brought a Red-shouldered hawk that had been hit by a car.
Upon conducting the admissions examination, Director Rick Schubert noticed a brood patch on the patient. A brood patch is featherless skin on a bird’s underside that facilitates heat transfer during incubation. Evidence suggested that the patient had been sitting on a nest.
Time was critical. We had to rehabilitate the bird rapidly enough so that it could continue to raise its young.
The bird suffered a significant head trauma. The first order of business was to address the swelling with steroids. The next order was to provide palliative care and then nutrition to return the bird to strength.
As it turned out, the neighbor who brought in the hawk was a wildlife biologist who’d been watching the nest. He reported that another adult was tending the offspring but they were still in peril. It take two to raise healthy Red-shouldered hawks. One to protect the nest while the other finds and retrieves food. The biologist informed us that crows were closing in on the nest, so the other adult could not leave to find food for the babies.
As soon as the patient became more bright and alert, we creance flew the bird to gauge its flight fitness. The bird was in good shape to fly. So we quickly called upon a member of our team of volunteers to take the bird back to its nest to rejoin its family.
It took teamwork, communication, quick thinking, and community mobilization to pull this effort together. Thank you to everyone involved in this success!
