On Jan. 15, Sarah Reddick-Redman, a grandmother of two, was making a trip to the chiropractor. As she walked in to the office at the corner of Fifth and Vermont streets, she noticed she wasn't alone. There sat a red-tailed hawk on the railing.
She went back to her car to grab a camera. With the lens focused on its body, she looked at the hawk, and the hawk looked away. After a moment, it turned its head again and looked her square in the eye. She told the hawk how beautiful it was to calm its nerves, but it didn't seem nervous. "It was so thrilling I can't really explain it. We were just looking at each other, no fear or nothing between us," she said. "It's like she came there for help."
After her appointment, she saw the hawk still perched on the railing, sitting still. Then just before driving away, she noticed a droop in the bird's wing when it flew.
After a call to the Black Hawk Wildlife Rehabilitation Project, staff took in the hawk and diagnosed it with a broken wing. For more than two months, they nursed it back to health.
On Saturday, Reddick-Redman showed up to say goodbye to the hawk before its release into the wild. Terese Evans, director of the nonprofit, said the bird was freed just in time for nest-building season."That's the part we look forward to: To be able to release them back into the wild as 100 percent whole as we could get them," Evans said.
Terese Evans, left, and husband Jim Evans, right, work to remove a red tailed hawk in preparations for its release into the wild Saturday, March 22, 2008 in Waterloo, Iowa. Terese is the director of the Black Hawk Wildlife Rehabilitation Project a group providing care to injured wildlife.
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