June 1, 2011

Oh little eyas, way up in your tree, tell me what do you see?

Update on the baby red-tailed hawk (or eyas, which is the official term for baby hawks)

Sunday afternoon Amy and Lauren went along to put the hawk back into its new nest. Lauren carried it up to the nest, while Amy documented the event. Lauren also left it with a dead mouse for lunch, just in case it took a while for the parents to find it. Baby hawk started eating its snack before we left the site, which means it was hungry. This is a good sign, because if it's hungry it will start calling for Mommy and Daddy (just like any hungry baby), so the parents, if they are in the area, will hear it and hopefully come back to take care of their youngster.






Sue taking the hawk out of the box












Hmm, this looks familiar...














You can't catch me! I refuse to go back into that horrid cardboard box!










On Monday Amy and Lauren went back to the nest to check on the little guy (or gal) and make sure his (or her) parents had come back to take care of it. As we got out of the car, we saw that it was eating something, which means that a parent had come back, because none of the wildlife rescue people had been by to feed it. We sat and watched for an hour, and in that time saw two adult red-tailed hawks in the area, one of which flew very close to the nest. Looks like our little eyas is going to be okay!





Amy at the nest, checking to make sure everything looks good and to give the hawk one last dead mouse snack. We figured that most hungry adolescents won't say no to a free meal, and we really didn't want to have to take dead mice home with us again. The hawk is in the basket to her left, crouching down so you can't see it. Apparently it was done with pictures after Sunday.







Lauren getting her look at the nest basket, which really isn't that high off the ground, somewhere between 15 and 20ft.

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