EAST HARLEM — Police officers rescued a young red-tailed hawk after it fell five stories down a building airshaft Tuesday afternoon.
It took officers from the 23rd Precinct about an hour to pull the 2-pound raptor, with an estimated 4-foot wingspan, out of the chute unharmed.
“I think [he] has been there for a couple of days,” said Officer Eric Carricato, who helped snare the bird and then carried him with a colleague in a brown cardboard box to the stationhouse a few hundreds yards away.
Officials did not know how the juvenile hawk got inside the narrow shaft, but once inside the bird's broad wingspan made it impossible to fly back out.
“He doesn’t appear to be injured. There is nothing wrong with him,” said Robert Spragg, a lawyer who volunteers as a bird rescuer with The Audubon Society and helped fetch the bird.
“He’s hungry but probably not dehydrated” said Spragg. “Hawks don’t need to drink as much as dogs do. They usually get their fluids through meat like rats or pigeon.”
He estimated the hawk was born this past spring.
Mark Cohen, a Housing and Urban Development consultant working in the building on East 103rd Street between Lexington and Third avenues, said he heard the bird around noon Tuesday.
“I've heard it moving. I heard like a squeal noise,” he said.
Harry Gartner, the building manager, said he called police after tenants complained to him about noise coming from the airshaft.
Building residents said it's not uncommon to see hawks in the neighborhood.
“I’ve seen hawks around. They eat rats. It’s good that they saved him,” said Leeza Roman, who lives on the first floor of the building. “I’m so happy he’s alive.”
“It’s just an innocent bird looking for a shelter and food,” her neighbor Lisa Gonzales said. "I'm not too sure the city is a good place for him but at least he's free and not locked in a zoo."
Spragg, who went back to his Midtown office with the juvenile hawk in a white box on Tuesday afternoon, said he would bring the bird to The Raptor Trust in New Jersey so the animal could be fully examined.
“Once they make sure he’s fine, they’re going to release him around here, probably in Central Park,” he said.
