Seven weeks after Stella the hawk flew off from the Oregon Ridge Nature Center when a tree smashed into her pen, she has been recaptured.
The hawk — skinny and exhausted but otherwise unharmed — appeared Sunday in a Perry Hall yard, more than 16 miles from the Cockeysville nature center.
The homeowners, who requested anonymity, spotted the hawk perched on a fence and noticed that it was wearing leather cuffs on its ankles, according to Jessica Jeannetta, Baltimore County Recreation and Park’s regional coordinator for nature centers.
After a quick internet search, the homeowners stumbled upon Stella’s story, contacted county officials and sent a photo of the bird. Jeanetta and another of Stella’s handlers dashed over with a stash of the hawk’s favorite snacks — dead mice and rats.
“We put out the food and talked to her,” said Jeanetta. “She flew right over and started eating. The actual recapture took about five minutes.”
Jeanetta said she and the other worker burst into tears once they caught Stella.
The parks team then took Stella to Phoenix Wildlife Center, where director Kathy Woods evaluated the hawk. Stella had lost about 40% of her body weight during her odyssey. She had a lesion on her mouth and some scrapes on her bill, but there were no major injuries, Woods said.
This is not the first time that Stella has cheated death.
The hawk was hit by a car months after hatching, which left her blind in her right eye. She was taken to an avian rescue center in West Virginia, where workers discovered that her chest was full of gunshot pellets, which restrict her movements.
Stella was deemed “non-releasable” and was brought to Oregon Ridge in 2021, where she lived in a pen outside the nature center, eating rodents from workers’ gloved hands and emerging for the occasional educational program.
Her quiet life was shattered on April 20 when a tree fell on the nature center, smashing open her pen. Stella flew off, and for weeks bird lovers scanned the trees around Oregon Ridge searching for her. Workers were afraid she would be unable to hunt, between her partial blindness, mobility issues and years in captivity.
Woods said that Stella would likely stay at Phoenix Wildlife Rescue for another week or two to regain her strength. The hawk’s weight is down to 950 grams, about 600 grams less than normal.
“She’s a little bit wobbly, but so would anybody be if headed toward starvation,” said Woods, adding that despite her trials, Stella’s feathers and tail were “pristine.”
To help rehydrate and plump up Stella, Woods has been feeding her the raptor equivalent of Gatorade — mice injected with extra fluids.
