Subject: RE: BS: Cooper's Hawk in Library of Congress
From:
Charley Noble
Date: 26 Jan 11 - 10:42 PM
Good news. The Cooper's hawk was successfully captured. Here's part of the blog update:
hawk that became trapped about a week ago in the Main Reading Room of the Library of Congress's Jefferson Building has been safely captured. I will update this post a little later with details and images (and possibly video).
UPDATE, noon EST: Mark Hartsell, editor of the Library's weekly staff newsletter, The Gazette, provided this firsthand report of the happy ending:
The hawk that took up an unauthorized residence in the Main Reading Room of the Library of Congress, eluding captors and delighting a nationwide online audience for a week, finally got evicted.
The juvenile, female raptor was apprehended early Wednesday morning by a three-person team and sent to a stint in rehab with the Raptor Conservancy of Virginia.
Here's how they got their bird:
The team put a pair of starlings – Frick and Frack, according to their owner – in a trap on a ledge inside the dome and waited, hidden beneath a tarp.
The Cooper's hawk that has been at the Library of Congress for at least one week was caught today around 8:30 a.m. In this photo, Kennon Smith (right), a federally licensed raptor bander who volunteers with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, shows the trap that was used, containing two European starlings to bait and rescue the hawk. (Library of Congress Photo/Abby Brack)
The starlings saw the hawk poised nearby and froze. But the noise of a truck passing by the Jefferson Building startled the pair and caused them to move.
The motion drew the attention of the hawk: She immediately flew onto the trap, where its talons entangled in the nylon nooses attached to the top of the wire cage.
The team grabbed the hawk, weighed and banded the bird, then placed it in a covered cardboard carrying box. It will be banded later today.
The capture occurred about 8:30 a.m., and the process took about 25 minutes from setup to completion, according to Craig Koppie, an eagle and raptor biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The bird is in good health and had no significant feather damage, said Kennon Smith, a federally licensed raptor bander who volunteers with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and assisted in the capture. Team members also said the room's large rotunda likely proved less injurious to a circling hawk than a smaller, more angular space would have.
The full stories has some nice images of the hawk being assessed by its captors (remember, there is a link in the first post) . No starlings were injured physically in the capture, although they are both probably recovering from sheer terror.
Cheerily,
Charley Noble
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sj
