Free bird: Rescued hawk is released with a tracker after months of rehab

Anton L. Delgado
Arizona Republic

For George Glynn, the message from the hawk’s piercing stare was clear.

“His eyes said ‘please help me.’ A hawk normally would have taken off, but he stayed, so I knew he needed me,” said Glynn, an operations manager at Cerbat Landfill in Kingman.

Glynn got that help from Nick Thompson, a wildlife manager for the Arizona Game and Fish Department, who drove to Kingman to capture the injured hawk.

“It was dehydrated. It didn’t make any effort to escape. It had no observable injuries. So I thought it must have been really sick,” Thompson said. “I wasn’t sure it was going to make it.”

But after months of rehabilitation, it did. On Wednesday, Thompson released the Swainson’s hawk back into the wild after around a 120-day stay in rehab at Liberty Wildlife in Phoenix.

Without a sound, the hawk burst from its box after a slight nudge from Thompson. It took to the air without glancing back and soared through the wind with ease.

Within seconds, the hawk, which had seemed larger than life, was nothing more than a speck in the sky. Three juvenile Swainson's hawks, orphaned and taking to the wild for the first time, flapped their wings to keep up.

“It’s the whole reason we do this job. We’re here to protect the environment and conserve wildlife,” Thompson said. “For those of us with boots on the ground it gives us that nice job satisfaction that we’re doing something that has an actual impact. It gives me a nice warm feeling inside.”

A rehabilitated Swainson's hawk is released back into the wild by Nick Thompson at Liberty Wildlife in Phoenix on Sept. 30, 2020. Thompson found the hawk in Kingman struggling in health before it was rehabilitated.

Rehabilitation and release

The injured hawk had suffered a shoulder injury, which is why it was unable to fly away when Glynn approached. 

After being rehydrated, fed and medicated, the hawk was brought to a prerelease flight enclosure, an 180-foot-long area with a sharp embankment, where it spent a few weeks building back muscle for its imminent migration, which spans North and South America.

A turkey vulture zooms sharply around the embankment built into Liberty Wildlife's 180-foot-long pre-release flight enclosure. This is where birds being rehabilitated are meant to build back their flight muscles.

Liberty Wildlife rehabilitates wildlife, provides conservation services and educates the public on natural history. According to its 2019 annual report, the organization assisted over 9,800 animals last year, spanning 167 species. Nearly 100 of those species were native birds, like the Swainson's hawk.

Most rehabilitated birds are released at the location where they were saved, but after months in rehab this hawk was given a helping hand.

“The migration has already started. So many of the birds have already begun flying south,” said  Laura Hackett, an education facilitator at Liberty Wildlife. “Since Phoenix is along the pathway, releasing him here will give him a better chance to be able to join up with the rest of the Swainson’s hawks.”

The hawk won’t be playing catch-up alone. The injured bird was released with three orphaned juvenile hawks, along with a little extra baggage.

Biologists from the Game and Fish Department had attached an identification band and lightweight transmitter to the hawk’s back. It will allow the department to track the bird’s progress, movement patterns and postrelease survival.

The rescued Swainson's hawk has a lightweight transmitter attached to its back. This will allow the Arizona Game and Fish Department to track the bird’s progress, movement patterns and post-release survival.

“To be able to witness the end state of its recovery, its release and now to be able to track that bird through its migration is just so exciting,” Thompson said.

The data from the bird will be a part of the department’s project on raptor migration through Arizona.

“Every release is a learning experience and it’s great that by tracking this bird this learning experience will just continue,” Hackett said. “It’s really heartwarming to see how a bird that we’d usually see flying in the sky and maybe not think twice about has brought a whole bunch of people together.”

Anton L. Delgado is an environmental reporter for The Arizona Republic/AZCentral. Follow his reporting on Twitter at @antonldelgado and tell him about stories at anton.delgado@arizonarepublic.com.

Environmental coverage on azcentral.com and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust. Follow The Republic environmental reporting team at environment.azcentral.com and @azcenvironment on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.