‘Tuffy’s dead’: baby hawk raised by eagles meets her untimely demise

Many people were cheering for Tuffy. But the baby hawk who was kidnapped — and then adopted — by a family of bald eagles has passed away.

The young red-tailed hawk captured the hearts and minds of bird watchers and wildlife enthusiasts when she joined an eagle family who originally intended to eat her for lunch.

But her life in the eagle’s nest turned out to be tumultuous and short. The mother eagle that once cared for Tuffy when her own kind turned on her and drove her from the nest, leaving her to die, says wildlife photographer Doug Gillard.

Gillard, who gave Tuffy her name and has been documenting her story for the past few months, says the birdie’s death has hit him hard and moved him to tears.

From dinner to daughter

Tuffy — who onlookers originally thought was male — ended up in her cross-species family more than a month ago when a mother bald eagle in Santa Clara County, California, snatched her from her nest and brought her home, most likely to feed to her eagle.

But Tuffy somehow survived the journey in the eagle’s powerful talons.

When the mother eagle saw a baby bird in her nest screeching for food, her hormonal instinct to feed it likely kicked in, said David Bird, a professor emeritus of wildlife biology at McGill University in Montreal.

From the beginning, the hawk struggled in her new home. Her adoptive mother fed her, but also occasionally pecked her. Her much larger eagle sister also behaved aggressively towards her.

Still, Tuffy grew big and strong enough to fledge – meaning she left the nest and started learning to fly.

Soon after, the mother turned on her, Gillard said, who at one point refused to let her return home and later forcibly threw her out of the nest.

Then Bird said he knew Tuffy was doomed.

“As soon as I heard that, I said, well, there’s no way she’s going to bring him food. So unless he finds a way to catch his own food, he’s going to starve,” he said. “And that’s exactly what happened.”

‘An absolutely horrible ending’

On Monday, Gillard says he was looking for Tuffy when he heard a familiar sound coming from high up in an oak tree, far from the eagle’s nest. He recognized Tuffy’s cry right away.

He watched as the mother eagle brought home a squirrel and expected to see Tuffy return to the nest for some of the action.

But Tuffy didn’t move. Then he knew something was very wrong.

He called Craig Nikitas of Bay Area Raptor Rescue, who, after some wrangling, got federal clearance to rescue Tuffy.

Gillard says he, Nikitas and a park ranger tried to retrieve the bird, but the mossy tree with its peeling bark proved impossible to climb. Attempts to lure and trap Tuffy also proved fruitless, as the little hawk was limp and weak.

A few days later, they found her body on the ground, bony and emaciated.

“What an absolutely horrible ending to this initially amazing story,” Gillard wrote on Facebook. “I am an emotional wreck and physically exhausted. I can say that under the circumstances I did my best to try and save the bird I have come to know and love so well – feels like part of my family.”

Mother belt not strong enough

An autopsy is needed to confirm Tuffy’s cause of death, but Gillard believes she is starving.

Bird agrees. He says that when a bird of prey flies out of the nest, it needs parental support to survive.

“They’re not able to catch food for themselves right away,” he said. “That period of about three weeks after they leave a nest is the most dangerous period of their lives.”

While there are other examples of young hawks surviving in eagle nests, Bird says it doesn’t seem like the female eagle formed a strong enough maternal bond with the hawk to make her mature.

According to Bird, had a rescue attempt been made sooner, Tuffy could have been raised in a wildlife sanctuary, taught to hunt, and released.

But Gillard says there was bureaucratic red tape every step of the way to help Tuffy, and by the time he and his colleagues got the necessary go-ahead to rescue her, it was already too late.

Nikitas told CBC that making decisions about when and when not to interfere with wildlife is complex, and officials at all levels have carefully considered the impact this would have on all animals involved.

“Apart from the occasional scavenging of carrion, or pirating prey from smaller birds of prey [birds of prey], eagles must capture and kill every meal they consume. Catching a hawk is no different than catching a squirming fish called Scruffy, or a struggling rabbit called Fluffy, despite the empathy we all felt for the little redstart,” he said in an email.

“There is no legal way and questionable moral justification for interfering with the eagles and depriving them of the prey they had caught.”

But once Tuffy was far enough away from the nest, he could spring into action.

“I did everything I could to help the hawk as soon as permission was granted to try and trap it,” Nikitas said. “With all my heart I wish it had been a success.”

Gillard says the California birdwatching community was deeply divided on whether to save Tuffy or leave her alone.

It’s a debate Bird says he’s seen played out before when he advocated — unsuccessfully — for tagging and tracking a hawk in Sidney, BC, similarly raised by eagles in 2017.

“There were a lot of… people saying, ‘Don’t interfere, don’t interfere. Let nature take its course,'” he said. “And those people won the day with Tuffy… But they didn’t, because Tuffy is dead.”