Morning Kim....I have a set of Jays and Cardinals who frequent my backyard....we also have quite a number of eagles who fly around here....man those birds are huge!
I enjoy Jays and Cardinals too.. We see the very occasional Stellar Jay around here but no Cardinals. Cardinals were frequent visitors to my feeder in Houston. Such beautiful birds.
Speaking of large birds, my sister and I were walking her two Weimaraners along a country canal right-of-way not far out of the city when we came upon the terrible scene of a Red-tail Hawk caught in the barbed-wired fence of an adjacent farm.
My sister managed to get her bird-dogs under control before they made the situation worse. While she held fast to the dogs at a distance, I slowly approached to see if it was still alive. It was.
The poor thing was hanging by one bloodied wing that seemed to be skewered on a barb right under the joint. Feathers were everywhere and blood was spattered about indicating that it had been struggling for a while to extract itself.
It's eyes locked on me and it weakly struggled for a few seconds as I approached. I could tell it was exhausted; on it's last bit of life. I've worked with large domestic birds before, but this was not the same. As I stood nearby and calmly spoke to it, I tried to understand the puzzle ..The wing caught on a barb was on the far side of fence, the other wing is stuck between the strands of barbed-wire emerging on the near side, one huge foot is dangling, the other seems to be clasped around the bottom strand of wire. Other problem? I had no tools or protective gear. I had what I was wearing and we were at least a 25 minute walk from anywhere including the vehicle we came in.
I slowly took my thin jean jacket off and approached, still talking, expecting it to panic, but it didn't. It literally watched me like a hawk. I became close enough to see and then kept watching, the bird's irises..still dilated (which is a good thing when working with birds - most birds will contract their irises to a pinhole before they strike/bite) so I continued to talk and slowly approach, spread jean jacket held out in front of me. Hiding my hands and fingers behind my jacket (no target to strike), I slowly covered the bird's head and wings. Then I grasped the top of wings and lifted the heavy bird so that I was supporting most of its weight. Problem- the one foot was still grasping the bottom strand of wire. I slowly let go of the uncaught wing and held the bird's weight with one hand as I moved the other one down to loosen the bird's toes. I noted that with the long talons, it's foot was as big as my hand.
Then I moved back to having a hand on each wing and guessed (correctly) that I needed to move the caught wing towards me and up to dislodge it from the barb. Once dislodged, I slowly lowered the bird down to the ground on the far side of the fence, leaving my jean jacket on top of it. I moved way back quickly and watched. No movement. Oh no - maybe I was too late.
We decided to walk away with the dogs to give it some time to rest without having us/a threat nearby. We returned in about 20 minutes to see that the bird had not seemed to move. I slowly approached to retrieve my jacket and the hawk startled out from underneath it and flew ..FLEW! a short way away. Yay!
In successive visits to the canal we would see one and sometimes 2 of these Red-tail Hawks and hoped that one of them was the one that we rescued from the fence.
Yes, it was a short season. Is there a season #2 in the works?
