HawkTalk, Inc.

04/25/2026

Helping nature along a little.

04/23/2026

Ahhh...the cloacal kiss!

Oh my! Bald Eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) in Maryland, USA contributed by Danny Stevenson photographe.

04/13/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BxyfxyY3v/

04/07/2026

My little Princes

04/05/2026

Unfortunately, the Red Shouldered hawk that presented Friday was humanely euthanized. While I didn't receive details whether the skull was actually fractured, the blow to the top of the head was hard enough rupture the lower left orbit.

Thanks to the finders who captured him, Julie Wooten on Inn for telling them what to do and the crew at Appalachian VCA for triage.

03/26/2026

What a wild ride!

Two Miami owls came home after a year of traveling through Europe.

In February 2025, two small burrowing owls slipped aboard the Royal Caribbean Allure of the Seas while the ship was docked at PortMiami. Nobody knows exactly how they got there. What's known is that they made themselves comfortable in the ship's open-air garden on Deck 8 — a lush, tree-lined space called Central Park — as the vessel set sail for Spain.

Ten days later, the ship arrived in Cartagena. Spanish wildlife officials took custody of the owls. And then the calls started — from Spain to Florida, from agency to agency — because burrowing owls are a protected species in the United States. They couldn't just be released in Europe. They had never lived there. Letting them go there would be a death sentence.

What followed was a year's worth of permits, international negotiations, two separate quarantine centers, and meticulous health screenings. At one facility in Murcia, staff fed them mice. At another, the menu was expanded to include quail chicks. In Madrid, they were loaded onto a carefully arranged international flight. The Fish and Wildlife Foundation of Florida covered the cost of bringing them home.

On March 12, 2026 — just over a year after they disappeared into that cruise ship garden — the two owls, now named Benito and Concho, were carried to Dinner Island Ranch, a 21,000-acre stretch of pineland and prairie south of Lake Okeechobee. FWC staff had buried an artificial burrow — a PVC pipe leading to a bucket-shaped chamber — near an existing vacant owl burrow, just in case the birds needed a nudge toward home.

They didn't need it for long. Benito and Concho emerged, looked around, and flew into the nearby pasture.

"This is a great example of just a wildlife success story," said the FWC biologist who oversaw their release. "You don't hear about it too often — especially at this level of scale."

Most wild animals that end up overseas never make it back. These two did. Not because it was easy. Because enough people decided it was worth doing anyway.



SOURCE:
WLRN — NPR Florida
US Fish and Wildlife Service
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission

02/13/2026

Hunters...GET THE LEAD OUT!

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1192694566265574&set=a.498408912360813

A juvenile eagle—a "hatch-year" bird who should be mastering the thermals over the Buffalo National River—is instead sitting in a wooden recovery mew, listening to a world it will never see again

This young explorer is the latest victim of the "Invisible
For the eagle lover, this specific case is a punch to the gut. Unlike the mature adults we often see in rehab, this bird hasn't even had the chance to grow its iconic white crown. It was just starting to navigate the jagged cliffs of the Ozarks when its internal systems were hijacked by a single, microscopic fragment of lead.

Biologists explain that in young, developing eagles, lead is particularly aggressive. It doesn't just slow their reflexes; it causes a catastrophic "burn" of the optic nerve. In this haunting image, you can see the results of Advanced Ocular Necrosis. Those eyes, which were biologically engineered to track a movement on a riverbed from a thousand feet up, have turned into milky, sightless spheres. The world hasn't just gone blurry for this bird; the "lights have been turned off" forever.

We take pride in the "rebound" of the American Eagle, but this image proves that "protected" on paper doesn't mean safe in the field.

A eagle is now a king without a kingdom, destined to spend the next 30 years in human care because he can no longer see the prey he was born to strike.

The medical team is continuing the chelation therapy to save his organs, but the "Golden Gaze" is gone.

02/13/2026

I LOVE Shoebills.

https://www.facebook.com/reel/2018824952026801

02/10/2026

It's what I loathe and despise about over zealous birders. All they want is the shot, the footage, or a box to tic on their stupid life list.

Bald eagles are sitting on eggs RIGHT NOW.

In February. In the cold. For 35 days straight.

And people are flying drones over their nests for social media content.

Here's what happens:
The eagle sees the drone as a predator. It has two choices:
1. Stay on eggs and risk attack
2. Fly up to fight the drone
If she flies? Eggs exposed. At 20°F, embryos die in minutes.
If she attacks? She can destroy the drone — and injure herself on the propellers.
Either way, you just killed a federally protected bird's offspring. For content.
Bald Eagle and Golden Eagle Protection Act:
→ Disturbing a nest = federal crime
→ Fine: up to $100,000
→ Prison: up to 1 year
→ INCLUDES drone disturbance
Eagles almost went extinct. DDT nearly wiped them out.
They came back from 417 nesting pairs in 1963 to over 71,400 today.
Don't be the reason they need saving again.

Keep your drone below 400 feet AND away from nests.
Better yet: use binoculars. From a distance. Like a decent person.

02/08/2026

Two Barreds delivered before breakfast!

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01/29/2026

Red shouldered hawk at my pond

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