According to the Gabriola Rescue of Wildlife Society (GROWLS), a pair of bald eagles from British Columbia have taken the extremely unusual step of adopting a baby red-tailed hawk into their nest.
The birds are found on Gabriola Island, right next to Vancouver Island, where bald eagles nesting have been breeding their own offspring.
Experts say the baby hawk was taken to the eagle’s nest to be used as food, and that a 24/7 camera that was set up to monitor the eagles captured the moment it passed.
However, after the eagle cubs did not eat the hawk, the parents began to grab it under its wing, both metaphorically and literally.
The red-tailed hawk baby is shown with a live camera. (Sasse Photos / YouTube)
A similar incident occurred in Sydney, BC, in 2017. It was the first time bald eagles were recorded raising a baby hawk instead of eating it in the province.
At the time, there was some debate about how this young hawk entered Sydney’s eagle’s nest.
The predominant theory was that the hawk was taken to the nest to be used as a prey, which seems to be the case this year.
“This should put an end to any alternative hypothesis about how these young hawks are in eagle’s nests,” GROWLS said in a statement Friday.
In 2018, the hawk, which was briefly bred by eagles, left in about three weeks and “disappeared, never to be seen again,” according to GROWLS.
Experts, including wildlife biology professor David Bird at McGill University, expect something similar to happen again. The baby red-tailed hawk is likely to leave the nest on Gabriola Island in the next three weeks.
Local residents and GROWLS volunteers have begun calling the baby hawk “Malala,” which they say means survivor.
GROWLS adds that hawk-eating eagles have only been recorded a handful of times in North America, and especially in California.
In 2017, Bird told CTV News that an adoption like this had only been documented “two or three times, a little, in the history of science.”