by Dennis Dalman
Outside of Sta Fit Gym in Sartell on Sept. 8, it didn’t take long for good people to come rushing to the scene to help an injured juvenile Cooper’s hawk, and the story has a happy ending.
While walking out of Sta Fit Gym after a workout, Sartell resident Douglas Wood noticed the injured hawk on the sidewalk. It looked stunned, apparently struggling to stay on one leg only. Wood figured it might have crashed into one of Sta Fit’s many large plate-glass windows.
Cooper’s hawks, Wood noted, are especially susceptible to flying into windows because of the fast flight speed and manner of hunting.
Wood is a long-time animal enthusiast/protector and author of the prize-winning children’s classic storybook, “Old Turtle.” It didn’t take Wood long to grab his phone, staying by the hawk, guarding it, protecting it.
First, he called a friend, Elaine Thrune, a Sartell resident who is a wildlife rehabilitator and long-time president of the National Wildlife Rehabilitators’ Association. She arrived in the blink of an eye. Using a bit of subterfuge, along with a muskie fishing net, they succeeded in capturing the beautiful bird.
Wood had to leave quickly for an out-of-town trip so he was glad to leave the hawk in the expert custody of Thrune. She then drove partway to the Twin Cities, where staff from the Minnesota Raptor Center, who had been tipped off, met Thrune, placed the bird in their vehicle and drove it to the raptor center, appropriately located in Falcon Heights.
The next day, Wood answered a phone call and was delighted to learn from someone at the raptor center that the hawk had fully recovered from soft-tissue wing trauma and an eye injury. The bird was ready and eager to be released.
One morning soon thereafter, two of the center’s volunteers, Jim and Mary Johnson, arrived in Sartell with the eager, antsy bird in a carrying case.
Finally, on the morning of Oct. 21, freedom day arrived for the hawk, totally recovered from its injuries. A small group of people gathered at West River Meadows Park in a neighborhood just a few hundred yards from where the hawk was found injured.
At the release-ceremony site, the bird was waiting eagerly in a carrying case resembling a backpack. Then, someone opened the case and – whoosh! – the happy hawk stretched and flapped its wings, then suddenly soared up, up into the sky, ready for its migration.
Cooper’s hawk
The following information is from “Hawk Mountain,” a global raptor conservation organization.
The Cooper’s hawk derives its name from William Cooper, a New York scientist whose son, James, is the namesake of the Cooper Ornithological Society.
Also known as a “bird hawk,” a “Coop” or a “Blue Darter, the Cooper’s hawk is slender, with short rounded wings and a long rudder-like tail. Its wingspan averages about 2.5 feet.
A Cooper’s hawk tends to migrate on their own, alone, unaccompanied by others. Coops in North America migrate as far south as central and southern Mexico. Others, those from the Eastern United States, most often migrate to the Southern United States, where they live during the winter.
In the early part of the 20th Century, Coops were hunted so heavily that up to 50 percent of first-year birds were killed. They also became victims of the widespread use of the pesticide DDT. After a 1972 ban of that pesticide, the numbers of Coops began to increase in the 1980s and 1990s.
The birds are most common in the Western United States, but their numbers are on the rise in other regions as well.
In Sartell, a rescued and healed Cooper’s hawk perches on a carrier case and prepares to soar back into freedom up in the wild blue yonder.
This photo, taken by Douglas Wood of Sartell, shows the wounded Cooper’s hawk just Sept. 8 outside Sta Fitness in Sartell.
At the Cooper’s hawk release ceremony are (left to right) Kathy Wood, Mary Johnson, Elaine Thrune and Jim Johnson. Kathy is the wife of Douglas Wood, who found the wounded hawk and called the people in the photo above to get the hawk healing treatment at the raptor center. Douglas Wood took this photo.
