Over the weekend Harlem-based IT worker and bird blogger Yojimbot finagled what he later described on his blog as "the most challenging rescue I've ever attempted." This is saying something, since Yojimbot has been volunteering on animal rescues for the Audubon Society in New York for the past fifteen years, rescuing over two dozen hawks during that time. When we spoke to Yojimbot yesterday, he noted, "This is the time of year that we get the most hawks, because the birds are nesting, so they force out their juveniles, who are then looking for a range." That is, a new territory to live and hunt.

Yojimbot felt extra pressure to quickly rescue and release this particular hawk, a huge red-tailed male, because at this time of year "his mate is on the nest waiting for him to come back with food. Now she has to leave the nest to go hunt, meaning there's a chance the nest could fail."

The hawk in question had chased a pigeon down a smoke stack at Ravenswood Generating Station in Long Island City and gotten stuck in a gas turbine exhaust room. He recalled, "Inside, the turbine room was all sloped metal, so the thing kept trying to claw up the side, and broke one of its front claws." Climbing a ladder and shimmying up a hatch to reach the trapped bird, he found it "flopping around like crazy."

He threw a towel over the hawk in an attempt to snatch it up, but the wily bird slid through a wide slat in the floor, into an even darker, narrower chamber. Yojimbot shimmied after him. "It was a very enclosed space. He had flipped over on his back, waiting for me with his claws up. I threw down the towel again and he went for me, but he missed, and instead he clipped his own wing. That broke a few feathers."

(Courtesy of The Origin Of Species)

After grabbing the stunned hawk's claws and passing him up through the slats, Yojimbot brought the hawk to WINORR for a night of rehab, where he was administered antibiotics and pain medication to calm him down. Because, "Like people, hawks get really irascible when they're in pain." The next day, he ate two rats, and on Sunday, Yojimbot released him in Hunter's Point Park South.

As for Yojimbot himself, "There wasn't a scratch on me. It was great."