Police Rescue Falcon In Chelsea, Now He's Learning To Hunt In NJ

CHELSEA, NY — A young falcon who was rescued by police in Chelsea last week is learning how to fend for himself at a wild bird rehabilitation center across the Hudson.

Police got a call about the felled fowl at 30th Street and 10th Avenue on June 18. The un-moving American Kestrel, the smallest and most common falcon in North America, was found thin and trembling on the sidewalk, likely from falling out of his nest, according to to the director of the Wild Bird Fund, which treated the scrawny bird.

"First flights are rough things. You leave the nest and who knows — there’s a lot of accidents," said Rita McMahon, the director of the Wild Bird Fund who has worked with birds for the last two decades.

The bird — who is named Gonz after the last name of the officer who scooped him up: Gonzalez — was taken to the Upper West Side based Wild Bird Fund where he was examined before shipping out with nine other falcons to the Raptor Trust in Millington, New Jersey. There he will learn the thrill of the hunt, explained McMahon.

"In the case of a young falcon, they don’t know how to hunt yet, normally their parents would help but that's not always possible," said McMahon. "It's important that they recover outdoors after they're treated, so we take them in and basically send them out to learn how to hunt."

The Wild Bird Fund typically sees 20-30 American kestrels in the month of June, since that's when the birds venture out of their nests. Raptor Trust will teach the falcons to hunt through a variety of techniques, such as pulling dead mice on a string quickly past the birds.

Once Gonz gets a hang of hunting he will be returned to his Chelsea roost.

Photo courtesy of NYPD