A Virginia hawk found grounded in a driveway turns out to be 'too darn fat to fly'
UPI relays the wildlife center's deadpan diagnosis, and the neighbor's vanishing chickens explain everything.
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.
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Red-shouldered hawk
After exploring Look: Hawk found grounded in Virginia driveway was 'too darn fat to fly', to meet the species, read about the Red-shouldered hawk.
A medium-sized buteo whose breeding range spans eastern North America, coastal California and parts of Mexico; deforestation is its main conservation threat.
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