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There's A Hawk On The Riverwalk!

By David Matthews | November 1, 2016 1:25pm | Updated on November 4, 2016 10:36am
 And it's eating a rat. 
There's a hawk on the riverwalk!
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DOWNTOWN — Chicago Riverwalk guests were greeted by a special guest on Halloween: a hawk. 

William Crompton was hanging by the riverwalk's new pumpkin patch Monday near Columbus Drive when he saw a hawk swoop down to the pumpkin patch, catch a rat, and fly its dinner back up to a tree. 

"Hawks aren't easy to walk up on while they have prey in their talons, who'da thought?" Crompton wrote.


The hawk eating a rat in a nearby tree. [William Crompton]

The hawk is identified as a Cooper's Hawk, a "medium-sized" bird with about a 12-inch wingspan and distinctive tail with a narrow white tip. Though common in city parks and nearby forest preserves, the hawks rarely find their way Downtown, said Dave Willard, president of the Chicago Ornithological Society. 

"But migrant individuals do sometimes find their way there," said Willard, who's also a retired collections manager at the Field Museum.

Perhaps more distressing is the rat the hawk found in the riverwalk's pumpkin patch, but given the riverwalk's setting next to Lower Wacker Drive, maybe rodents aren't too surprising. 

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