After two months of rehabilitation, Wendi Pencille knew it was time to let her young red-tailed hawk fly free.
With her freckle-faced 4-year-old son by her side early Friday morning, Wendi slowly removed the hawk from his 100-foot cage, allowing him to rest on her bulletproof glove. The weather was dreary, but mild — perfect for the release.
She walked the hawk to an open area at her Ryan Road home, giving his wings space, but he seemed reluctant to leave. With the patience of a mother who has done this once before, Wendi waited. Taking his time, the hawk swiveled his head, adjusting to the sudden change in environment, before finally deciding it was safe. A few flaps of his powerful wings, and he was perched on a barren tree branch nearby.
“I think he was a little bit nervous,” said Pencille, a wildlife rehabilitator and owner of the Bless the Beast Foundation. “Most of them can’t wait. They just want to get away.”
Realizing the hawk was back in the wild for good, Pencille’s son Jaden burst into tears. The hawk above remained poised, watching those he just left behind.
“I missed him,” Jaden said later, happily playing with his battleship game. “I wanted him to stay with me.”
When the Orleans County Animal Control first brought the red-tailed hawk to Pencille’s home after he was hit by a car on Route 31, the wildlife rehabilitator feared the bird wouldn’t survive. For days he displayed signs of a severe concussion, often laying down in his small cage, she said. One of his eyes was so severely damaged, it had to be removed.
The 1-year-old hawk bounced back quickly, however, and was soon placed in a larger cage, where he learned to hunt with impaired vision.
“It’s a hands-off rehabilitation,” Pencille said. “You have to always keep in mind that you want them to stay wild.”
Always the kid on the block known for caring for injured animals, Pencille graduated from Cornell University with a degree in animal science before becoming a wildlife rehabilitator. With the help of her husband, Tim, an engineer at Delphi, she founded the not-for-profit Bless the Best Foundation in 1991, and has been saving wild animals and educating the public ever since.
As a rehabilitator, Pencille drives to the Buffalo-Niagara International Airport once a month to pick up boxes of frozen rodents from a company called the Gourmet Rodent. Her freezer is filled with frozen rabbits, and another cage is designated for live rodents. Her phone rings at all hours of the day and night with agencies looking to drop off an injured hawk or owl. Instead of an addition on her house, she put the money into $30,000 worth of lumber for a large flying cage.
On occasion, community members have been known to stop by with road kill, thinking she can use it for feed. She tells them she’s good — but not that good.
“You do the best you can,” Pencille said. “And you hope that that’s enough.”
Contact reporter Nicole Coleman at 798-1400, ext. 2227.
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October 24, 2007
FLYING FREE: Bless the Beast Foundation releases red-tailed hawk
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