CROW surgeries and care give young hawk in Alligator Alley collision a fighting chance

Laura Ruane | The News-Press

Show Caption Hide Caption Hawk embedded in grill of vehicle has fighting chance at CROW Red shouldered Hawk is recovering at CROW after getting embedded in a grill of a vehicle.

The young red-shouldered hawk swooped in front of Chevy van hauling a Fort Myers Beach family across the state, on Alligator Alley.

After what happened next, it shouldn’t be alive.

But it is – and after two surgeries on a broken wing and several hours of physical therapy – has a fighting chance of returning to the skies.

A chance encounter between a hawk and a motor vehicle is not surprising. “They tend to be roadside diners,” said Dr. Kyle Abbott, the veterinarian who’s treating the bird at the nonprofit Clinic for the Rehabilitation of Wildlife on Sanibel Island.

Red-shouldered hawks generally fly at 18-34 mph, watch from high above the treetops, and swoop down on their prey, which typically includes small mammals, reptiles, amphibians and small birds.

The open space of the cross-state four-lane highway makes prey easily visible and vulnerable.

Annette Dwyer, the van’s driver, described the collision between her vehicle and the bird as “kind of freakish.”

Returning home from a sailing regatta in Fort Lauderdale, the Dwyer family was traveling the Alley on a Saturday afternoon.

“I saw (the hawk) swoop down in my lane. I thought it would fly straight across to the median.

“But it decided to do a little circle in front of me.

“I was going 70 mph. I couldn’t really change lanes,” Dwyer said.

She heard the hawk hit the family van, but didn’t see it again and figured it had dropped beneath it. They didn't think about it again that evening, as they arrived at their stilt home and hurried up the stairs for a night of watching college football.

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However, the next morning, while Annette Dwyer took one son to soccer practice in another vehicle, husband Mike Dwyer and 14-year-old son Bo discovered the bird, trapped – wings extended – in the old Chevy van’s grille.

Mike Dwyer cut the plastic splash guard beneath the grille to free the bird, which was quiet and presumably dead.

Instead, “it started hopping across the yard. My son had to grab it,” Annette Dwyer said, retelling her husband’s account.

After consulting a bird-savvy friend, the father and son wrapped it in a towel, and placed it in a cardboard box. Mike Dwyer drove the hawk to CROW, which performs 250-300 surgeries while treating up to 4,000 wild animals a year.

“The people who found (the hawk) brought him to us very quickly. That gave him a chance,” Abbott said.

It's too soon in the bird's development to know it's gender. For some reason, the humans around the bird on Friday tended to use the pronouns "him" or "it."

Abbott surgically set the fractured ulna and radius bones in the hawk’s left wing, inserting three metal pins held in place by an “external fixator,” a stabilizing frame made from a plastic drinking straw that's filled with orthodontic resin.

The bird’s made “a lot of good progress. It’s alert, stands on its own and “is a great eater,” said Abbott, who’s five months into a yearlong internship with CROW.

However, a month after the collision, the prognosis for red-shouldered hawk No. 18-3849 being made whole and released into the wild “is guarded to fair,” Abbott said.

With a reporter and photojournalist for The News-Press observing on Friday, he supervised taking radiographs – images an X-ray machine produces – after the bird was given anesthesia and pain medication.

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A leather hood covered its eyes and its beak. Tape sheathed its talons.

Abbott wore protective gloves and swathed the bird in a towel while transporting it from a cage to X-ray machine.

“His bites are minimal in comparison to what his talons can do,” Abbott said.

The hawk only weighs about a pound and a quarter.

Once it was placed on the X-ray table, a veterinary technician checked its heartbeat and respiration. A warming pad – a sock filled with rice and heated in a microwave – was placed under the bird’s motionless body.

“We try to not get too attached. But all of us are animal lovers. We have a special fondness for the animals with us for a long while,” Abbott said.

After completing the radiographs and physical therapy, Abbott and the technician gently prodded the bones. Then they extended the injured wing to check its range of motion, which was roughly 20 degrees less than desired.

Although the range of motion has improved, it’s not back to where it should be for one of nature’s “finely tuned flying machines,” Abbott said.

The callous forming over one piece of broken bone also should be thicker, he said.

It wasn’t the outcome he’d hoped for. On Friday, Abbott gave the hawk a 50-50 chance of recovering enough to be released into the wild.

He thinks this hawk gets too stressed-out among humans to do well in long-term captivity or as one of CROW’s “wildlife ambassadors” – non-releasable animals that are taken to public education events and live the remainder of their lives at the clinic compound.

That means, if the bones don’t heal satisfactorily and the wing range of motion doesn’t further improve, the hawk might be euthanized.

“if this doesn’t heal right, it’s going to be chronic pain for him long-term. In our minds, he shouldn’t have that,” Abbott said.

CROW has invested a lot of time and expertise into this little hawk.

“If he had to pay his own bill … it would be in the neighborhood of $10,000,” said Dr. Heather Barron, CROW medical & research director.

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The clinic, which is marking its 50th year, is managing with a budget of $1.4 million, thanks to its more than 200 volunteers. The student volunteer hours alone save CROW about $333,000, Barron told The News-Press in a previous interview.

She paused by Abbott while he studied the latest round of wing radiographs.

“From this angle, it looks like you should give (healing) a little more time,” Barron said, adding:

“Why don’t you put him outside (in an aviary) to do his own physical therapy?”

More stress on the wing through flight could encourage growth of the bony callous that’s bridging the fractures. The range of motion also could improve.

Barron also suggested that Abbott keep the external fixator on the hawk’s wing for now, and remove the pins in stages over the next few weeks.

After the hawk fully awoke from the anesthesia, Abbott carried it outside CROW’s hospital to a nearby aviary clad in strong mesh on the exterior, soft mesh for the interior -- and with a floor of sand.

A few minutes after people exited the aviary, the bird left a low perch and flew the remaining length of the enclosure.

“I’m quite impressed,” Abbott said. If the flights continue, the bones heal stronger and the wing extends further, the hawk will be moved to progressively bigger and higher-roofed aviaries.

Abbott’s hope for the hawk:

“We want him to fly across the sky and go for miles and miles.”

Learn more

Follow the hawk's progress: Log on to http://bit.ly/RSHA18-3849.

If you go

What: Clinic for the Rehabilitation of Wildlife–Visitor Education Center

Where: 3883 Sanibel Captiva Road, Sanibel, Florida

Hours: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. From Jan. 1 through April 30, Monday through Saturday.

Presentations are held daily in the Visitor Education Center at 11 a.m.

Admission: $12 for ages 13 and up; $7 for ages 4-12; 3 and under free

Info: crowclinic.org or (239) 472-3644