#birds

An adult female red-shouldered hawk found sitting in a resident's driveway about a mile from the Southwest Virginia Wildlife Center in Roanoke was not hurt, UPI reports: she was simply too heavy to fly.

Rescuers checked her for broken bones, lead poisoning, eye problems, head trauma, emaciation and bruising and found nothing. The center's veterinarians said she weighed 2 pounds, nearly a pound over normal for a female of her species, and that they "couldn't even palpate her keel due to the heavy layer of fat covering it."

The woman who found the bird asked around and learned that a neighbor's free-roaming chickens had been "disappearing at an alarming rate" for weeks. The center said the hawk had been eating her fill and napping in nearby trees. She is now on a weight-loss diet, and the center asked residents to keep chicken runs covered so they don't "indirectly" feed wildlife.

An exotic green bird, possibly a parrot, flew into Terminal 5 at Chicago O'Hare International Airport and perched on passengers' heads and luggage near the Air France check-in line, pecking anyone who tried to catch it, UPI reports. The visit was on Oct. 13, according to the worker who filmed it; the videos spread in the following week.

Paris Elbert, the O'Hare worker who filmed it, told CBS Chicago the bird "chose fight, not flight." A janitor eventually caught it in a shirt and took it to a veterinarian to be checked and scanned for a microchip.

A young male southern ground hornbill at Artis Zoo in Amsterdam has received 3D-printed prostheses for both the upper and lower parts of his beak, after both broke, the New York Post and Vice report. The zoo said that as far as is known from the scientific literature, it is the first time a bird has received both.

Utrecht University designed the parts from a CT scan and the broken pieces of his original beak; the prostheses are screwed on and can be removed. "Our biggest concern was that he would become so upset that he would stop eating," the zoo said. Instead, it said, he used the beak the same day and picked up a mouse the next morning.