Hawk that spent 2 days in car grill returns to wild

ROSWELL, Ga. — It’s a rare happy ending after a hawk-car collision.

A low-flying red-tailed hawk, an adult male likely hunting its next meal, found itself wedged in a car’s grill, just above the bumper.

The hawk collided with a Lexus on Highway 314 in Fayette County on May 31. The driver estimated she was going about 45 mph.

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Hawk bumper recovery A hawk-car collision usually doesn't end well, but this hawk was lucky. (Source: Chattahoochee Nature Center)

Too often, these sorts of collisions end in death for the bird or severe injuries.

But a team effort led to the hawk’s successful recovery two days later.

Details of the rescue was provided by Rose Guerra, a new volunteer transporter for the nonprofit Georgia Wildlife Network. She is also a canoe guide and longtime staff member at the Chattahoochee Nature Center in Roswell.

Getting the hawk out of the car took some doing, though. The driver called several organizations trying to get the hawk out of the car’s grill. The Georgia Wildlife Network sent a volunteer on Sunday who managed to remove a piece of the car but couldn’t extract the hawk, Guerra said.

The driver drove the car to Classic Collision in Union City on Monday with the hawk in the grill.

“The body shop employees were stunned but in good spirits — they had never seen anything like it," Guerra said.

One of the crew even helped with the containment box, Guerra said. She posted social media video of the hawk being safely removed from the car’s grill.

The job for the rescuers was then to determine if the hawk’s injuries were survivable.

Guerra drove the hawk straight to Chattahoochee Nature Center that Monday. When she came back on Wednesday, staff members said the hawk had broken feathers but was otherwise uninjured. It was eating, improving and would be moved to a flight case soon.

Chattahoochee Nature Center houses more than 75 injured animals that cannot be released back into the wild, some of which you can visit at the center.

A bird of prey who hits a car often doesn’t have a very good prognosis, with many of the cases requiring humane euthanasia and others surviving with injuries that make them unable to survive on their own..

The hawk’s stay at the nature center was brief, thankfully for a good reason.

Chattahoochee Nature Center gave the hawk several days of pain control and anti-inflammatory medications, said Kathryn Dudeck, the center’s wildlife director. It was then moved to an outside enclosure so the crew could determine if it suffered soft-tissue trauma from the crash.

“By the next day, he was flying the full length and easily reaching every perch. Live prey testing came next, and he passed it with flying colors, letting us know he was ready to go home,” Dudeck said.

Last week, the Chattahoochee Nature Center released the hawk into the wild.

What to do for injured or orphaned wildlife

The Georgia Wildlife Network has information on what to do when you encounter injured, sick or orphaned wildlife.

Both the nonprofit group and the Georgia Department of Natural Resources say in most cases, it’s best to leave wildlife alone.

For instance, in many cases when people think a baby animal has been orphaned, it really hasn’t, and well-meaning people have been known to separate babies from their mothers.

The Georgia DNR also has a list of what to do in cases of suspected sicknesses, including mange, rabies and distemper.

If you need assistance with sick wildlife, call 1-800-366-2661.

The Georgia Department of Natural Resources also has an interactive map of rehabbers.

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