This being the season of joy and good cheer, I wanted a feel-good story for this Christmas Eve. This one fits the bill:
My birding friends Art and Lisa Hurt, who live near Northlake Mall in DeKalb County, were driving on LaVista Road the other day when they spotted a hawk that apparently had been hit by a car.
Art stopped, got out and approached the frightened, injured bird, an immature male Cooper's hawk. Art used his hooded jacket to cover the creature and keep it calm. He and Lisa took it home, where he quickly fashioned a small cage from two laundry baskets. Meanwhile, Lisa called Kathryn Dudeck, a wildlife rehabilitator at the Chattahoochee Nature Center in Roswell. She said bring the bird to the center as soon as possible.
Dudeck found that the bird surprisingly was a tad plump, meaning that he was feeding well. Also in his favor was that he had no broken bones. He did, however, have a concussion. Using an ophthalmoscope, Dudeck discovered that the injury had caused blood to pool behind the right eye, shutting off vision in it.
If the vision loss was permanent, he could not be returned to the wild. For raptors, good vision is crucial for catching prey and surviving. That's particularly true for the Cooper’s, which belongs to the accipter class of hawks. Accipters inhabit wooded areas. Their short, rounded wings and long, rudderlike tails allow them to fly quickly in zigzag fashion among the trees as they chase prey, mostly small songbirds.
For a week, Dudeck treated the injured hawk with anti-inflammatory eyedrops and medications. The pool of blood shrunk and his vision improved. He was put into a cage 20 feet wide, 20 feet long and 35 feet high, big enough for taking short flights. Last weekend, his maneuvering indicated that his vision had fully come back and that he was ready to be returned to the wild. That happened Tuesday -- a happy ending to what could have been a sad story.
Unfortunately, most young hawks aren't so lucky. As many as 50 percent to 80 percent die during their first year -- due, in large part, to their not learning good hunting and flying skills. For a raptor, learning to fly and hunt isn't easy. A young hawk that doesn't master those skills may get through summer when food is plentiful. But in winter, when prey is less available and competition for food is fierce, the less able bird is likely to perish. Being hit by a car also is a major danger.
It's a big reason why wildlife rehab hospitals often are busy places in the fall and winter with immature raptors that have gotten into trouble, a hazard of being young and inexperienced. "Gotta go," Dudeck said earlier this week. "Got three more birds coming in."
In the sky: The moon is new tonight and will be a thin crescent low in the west at dusk Sunday, said David Dundee, an astronomer at the Tellus Science Musuem. Mercury is low in the east just before dawn. Venus is low in the west at dusk and will appear near the moon Tuesday. Mars rises out of the east just after midnight. Jupiter is in the east as it gets dark. Saturn rises out of the east about four hours before dawn.
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