Recuperated Cooper’s hawk returns to wild after crash

DIXMONT – For a moment, the Cooper’s hawk sat on its handler’s fists, whose fingers were wrapped around the bird’s legs to hold it.

Its alert eyes looked straight ahead, its head and beak were still, as if poised for flight.

In a second, Marc Payne, co-director of Avian Haven, a bird rehabilitation center in Freedom where the hawk had been mending for five weeks, handed the bird to wildlife biologist Kelsey Sullivan of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. Sullivan turned and with his hands gesturing to the blue, cloudless sky, as if making an offering, he released the hawk to the east.

Within seconds the hawk had flown in a straight line high over the trees surrounding the Kennebec Road farm’s open field that served as a launch site.

Two crows flew up to join the hawk before continuing on their journey over the treetops. The hawk then flew out of sight on its journey over the woods.

The young hawk was the same one that had crashed into the photography department window of the Bangor Daily News building and fallen onto a gravel roof beneath the window on Feb. 20.

Payne, who has been working with birds in distress for 25 years in New Jersey and Maine, said the hawk was brought to the center by DIF&W biologists Sullivan and George Matula. At first the bird appeared to have a concussion and to have trouble seeing. It had no broken bones.

During its rehabilitation, the Cooper’s hawk, named for 19th century ornithologist William C. Cooper, ate mice and gradually returned to good health. Normally the Cooper’s hawk feeds on other birds.

According to Birds of North America, the Cooper’s hawk is a medium-size hawk with a dark gray back and reddish and white underpart. Its size ranges from 15 to 20 inches long, wingspan 24 to 35 inches, and weight between 9 and 21 ounces. The female is a third again as big as the male.

Its habitat is the woods of North America, and it is built for fast flight through an obstacle course of trees and limbs.

Payne said the bird was in good health and he expected it to return to its nesting place, which he assumed was around Bangor. They released the bird from Dixmont rather than Freedom, where Avian Haven is located, because it’s closer to Bangor and easier for the bird to make its way home.

gchappell@bangordailynews.net

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