“Kira is here because she isn’t able to fly, she couldn’t survive in the wild without that ability. Flight is a huge part of how they hunt, how they find their food, how they maintain their territory, all those kinds of things so without being able to do that she simply wouldn’t survive,” said Wargo Nature Center program supervisor Krista Harrington. She spent a few years living at a nature center in Iowa, before making Wargo Nature Center her permanent home in 2004. The naturalists at Wargo have been learning about her since then, and as they learn about her, they welcome in visitors and school groups to learn about her as well. RELATED LINKS: “One of the fun parts about owning a red-tailed hawk is they’re one of the most common hawks in Minnesota,” said Harrington. “Most people see them, they sit on power lines, they sit on fence posts, they see them soaring above open fields, they are really one of the most common, easily recognizable birds in Minnesota so it’s fun to have a red tailed hawk that people can see up close, see those makings up close, figure out identification skills.” Or beyond the basics, people can learn about hawk behaviors. “A day in the life of Kira is mostly what you see. She gets to absorb everything that’s going on around her. We do have a fair amount of wildlife that walks around here at night from what we’ve picked up on trail cams. Any extra food from her we’ve thrown into the woods, it magically disappears so she gets to observe all of those wonderful things walking around. She gets a lot of visitors that come by to say hi,” said Harrington. Because Kira can’t fly, they learned that they had to create an enclosure that she could still move around in. This was built by an eagle scout before Kira arrived. And she has made herself right at home and figured out how to move around with the mobility that she does have. “It’s mostly jumping. She’s got some fairly good leg muscles from what we’ve been able to figure out, so she can jump from the back of her mew all the way to the way to the front and land on those perches successfully. It’s designed so that she can reach those perches safely. Se can also get up from the ground, she can hop up on a lower perch and work her way to the farther perches in the back,” said Harrington. In the wild, red-tailed hawks live as far north as Alaska, and as far south as Central America. While some enjoy the warmer weather, given the choice, many hawks stay right here year round. “Some red-tailed hawks are migrating, some are not so for her to be here all year round that’s not really an issue for her,” said Harrington. But, even as Kira has been educating Wargo’s hundreds of thousands of visitors in her 12 years at the nature center, there is still one thing that don’t know about her. “We really don’t know if it’s a girl, it’s just a wild guess. Because she weighs about three pounds, female birds are bigger than boy birds so based on her weight we’ve guessed that she’s a girl but we really don’t know,” said Harrington.
Kira the Hawk Delights Nature Center Visitors
LINO LAKES, Minn. – (March 10, 2016) – In 2001, Kira was found injured, likely hit by a car as she dove for food.
