The bird fairy, a hawk and I. An adventure to rescue a red-tailed hawk

On a hot summer day, Julian Heavyside came to the Cowan Tetrapod Collection lab, at the Beaty Biodiversity Museum, Canada and gave the alert. A Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) had been found in a miserable condition and was stuck in the sticklebacks ponds East of our campus. Ildiko Szabo, the curator of the Cowan Tetrapod collection, followed by her enthusiastic team, went to the rescue of this beautiful North American raptor. Raptors are rarely seen in water because they obtain water through their diet. So a raptor sitting immobile in water such as the red-tailed hawk we were about to rescue could indicate poisoning. After safely capturing the hawk, Ildiko Szabo decided that she needed to go to the O.W.L Rehab Society in Richmond. So we ended our day by taking a nice ride in Ildiko Szabo's glamorous car to Richmond. The diagnosis was reasuring: this immature Red-tailed Hawk female was refreshing herself at the pool and was perfectly healthy. What a relief! After a few weeks spent at the O.W.L Rehab Society, she was released back into the wild where she belongs, and it was breathtaking watching her wings deploy in the air!