Cooper's hawk caught in Bay Shore trap is euthanized
A hawk with a mangled leg had to be euthanized after being rescued on Saturday from an apparently illegal trap in Bay Shore, according to a wildlife rehabilitator.
The injury was so severe that the hawk wouldn’t have been able to hunt or to hold food, nor was the bird a candidate to be an education animal because this type of hawk gets too stressed in captivity, said Adrienne Gillespie, a hospital supervisor at the Alexander Wildlife Rescue Center in Hampton Bays. The Cooper's hawk was euthanized there via injections.
Hawks need their legs to hunt, she said, so “he would have never been able to survive in the wild."
The matter is under state investigation, according to Gillespie.
John DeBacker, a licensed wildlife rehabilitator who runs Long Island Cat Kitten Solution rescue, said the Cooper’s hawk had been stuck in a pine tree in a metal trap, outside a home on Wallbridge Avenue in Bay Shore on Saturday evening.
DeBacker raced to the scene after learning about the ordeal from a friend. He said he scaled the evergreen and carefully brought down the woodland raptor, whose left leg was mangled inside the trap.
The trap is believed to have been set illegally because it did not have any permit tags or a serial number, DeBacker and other wildlife rehabilitators said. Cooper’s hawks are federally protected. It's not immediately clear who set the trap or for what purpose. The owner of the property where the hawk was found was distraught and initially called another neighbor for help, DeBacker said.
“It was suffering for a bit. … It was pretty horrific,” DeBacker said. “We’re thinking someone in the neighborhood set the trap, then it flew up and got snagged in the tree.”
It took a coordinated team effort to stabilize the hawk. Jackie Roche and her husband Joe Rocco, who run Broken Antler Wildlife Rescue in Riverhead, arrived and pried the clamp open to free the hawk’s leg. They also stemmed the bleeding but the damage was already done.
The avian predator lost his entire left claw.
Birds of prey help keep the ecosystem in check by killing a variety of small animals, including rodents.
