Wings of Hope: An IRCC Rescue Mission

by IRCC Resident, Karen Guevara

Two healthy, alert, Red-Shouldered Hawk chicks in their new nest.

Sometimes, it really does take a village to raise young ones. This is a story about people doing their everyday job, seeing something wrong, and acting on it.

A pair of red-shouldered hawks spent the early months of 2025 building a huge nest atop a large branch in one of two oak trees in front of my IRCC home. In early April, they welcomed two young chicks. But in a heavy wind gust on the Thursday before Palm Sunday, the oak branch cracked just enough to tumble the incredibly young chicks out of the nest, to the ground below.

The mama hawk was desperate, swooping and dropping food to them from above. Enter Olga and Trevor from IRCC Maintenance, who noticed the activity and acted. They cordoned off the area and called the Florida Wildlife Hospital for guidance. The verdict: bring the babies to them to ensure they suffered no injuries from the fall. Done.

The next chapter is most impressive. After the mama hawk abandoned the nest, IRCC Maintenance workers acted. They lashed a heavy-duty basked into a vee in the oak’s trunk, near the abandoned nest. They then moved much of the inner parts of the nest into the basket.

Meanwhile, the Wildlife Hospital checked over the baby hawks, finding they each had a slight respiratory infection but no injuries from the fall. After successfully treating the babies with a course of antibiotics, they determined the babies could be reunited with their parents.

Adult hawk tending to the chicks.

The Wildlife workers brought the babies back on Monday afternoon and placed them in their new nest. They then began calling the mama hawk back to the nest by placing a wireless Bluetooth speaker into a bucket beneath the oak tree, playing the sounds of baby hawk chirps. As soon as they heard the returning call of the mama hawk, they moved the bucket (used to direct the sound) onto the top of a maintenance cart, aimed at the tree where they had heard the mama’s cries. After a few moments, the mama hawk swooped past the babies’ tree and landed on another distant tree. Minutes later, she swooped past and landed on the second oak in my front yard. After several more minutes, she landed on her babies’ tree, but on the opposite side of the nest.

Then came the hours-long wait, hoping she would approach the nest. As the Wildlife worker monitored this through her binoculars, she noted she would only leave once the mama hawk approached the nest. Until that contact, she warned there was a possibility this hawk was not the mother and only an interested adult hawk. She said that if the adult hawk did not approach the nest before nightfall, she would remove the babies from the nest and repeat the ritual the following day.

Finally, after several hours, the mama hawk approached the nest and began tending to her babies, bringing them food. What a moving testimony of the character of IRCC workers – to see a need and act to address it. (I will note that during this whole event, they continued to accept maintenance calls from residents, stopping back by to check on progress in between.) What a wonderful community to call home.

Photos provided by Jeremiah Zeleny, Photographer, Timeless Focus Photography LLC – @timelessfocusfl