Years after he saved a falcon from imminent death, bird blogger Yojimbot recently rescued a red-tailed hawk that got trapped inside of the Ravenswood Generating Station, also known as Big Allis, on Vernon Boulevard in Long Island City. It’s a power plant capable of generating 2,480 megawatts of electricity, and no place for a hawk.
The adult male red-tail chased a pigeon down a smokestack and became trapped in a small room near the exhaust turbine. Yojimbot wrote about the successful rescue on his blog:
As we scale up and approach the bird, it was extremely agitated. Instead of trying to chase the bird around the small enclosure, I just waited for it to flop in front of me and threw a towel over it. This worked but the sly bird squirmed between the planks and down into the enclosure beneath us. Damn! After composing myself, we looked for a way into that area but there was none, so I squeezed in between the same gap and got down to where the now furious bird was. Again I got the towel and threw it at the bird, which was now on its back. It tried to foot the towel but missed and instead grabbed its own wing. I then quickly corralled the bird but it wouldnt release its own body. Not wanting to risk further injury I climbed back up and put the hawk in the box we had. Whew…now to get down without injuring ourselves or the bird.
The bird was then handed over to the folks at WINNOR. Yojimbot has photos and an account of the harrowing rescue, but he was kind enough to share video of the rescue with ANIMAL. You can watch it above.
