The Washington community had a winged visitor near the square on the morning of March 3rd. A Cooper’s Hawk was seen on the sidewalk in front of the old Federation Bank building at the corner of Main Street and Iowa Avenue. While indigenous to our area, spotting the animal where you normally see walking traffic is not.

Washington County Conservation Executive Director Zach Rozmus spoke about how his department takes action when they receive a call like that, what happened to this particular hawk and where the animal is now, “One of the things that I really enjoy about my job is that I think oftentimes, we’re asked to be the voice of wildlife. The other day I had several calls about an injured hawk that was in downtown Washington. When we got there, we noticed it had a clear head injury. We took it up to the RARE group, which is a group that we work with pretty frequently to rehabilitate raptors. That’s actually my first Cooper’s Hawk that I have had to respond to for a call like that. I’m hoping that we get a clean bill of health for him in the next couple days and we can get him released in Washington County.”

The Raptor Advocacy Rehabilitation and Education (RARE) Group, with headquarters in Iowa City, was founded in 2015 and is dedicated to the rescue, rehabilitation and conservation of birds of prey throughout Iowa. The volunteer organization helps more than 150 birds per year.