California eagles brought baby hawk to their nest as food. Now they’re raising it instead

Strange bird bedfellows have been spotted in San Simeon, where a pair of bald eagle parents have apparently adopted a baby red-tailed hawk they originally brought back to their nest as food.

Instead of becoming a meal, the hawk chick has been seen alive, sharing the nest with the eagle parents and being fed alongside their two eaglets.

Whether the fortuitous outcome continues for the hawk chick, however, remains to be seen.

“It’s certainly happened before, but it’s not common at all,” said Morro Coast Audubon Society Program Director Torrey Gage-Tomlinson of a hawk nestling being taken in by an eagle family. “It’s really rare for that to happen.”

Gage-Tomlinson said that although he can’t be entirely certain, he is “99.9% sure” that it is indeed a red-tailed hawk alongside the eaglets. Red-tailed hawks are the most common hawk across the U.S., known for their reddish-brown tail and rounded wings.

Kimberly Stroud, executive director of the Ojai Raptor Center, also confirmed the baby hawk looked like a red-tail.

The hawk chick has a fluffy white head and a much smaller beak than the eaglets, who are brown and already have the pronounced beak bald eagles are known for.

“What probably happened is the bald eagle caught this nestling to feed to its young and carried it back to its nest,” Gage-Tomlinson said.

Predators like bald eagles and great-horned owls tend to prey on other predators lower on the food chain like hawks.

Gage-Tomlinson said a “parental spell” can kick in, prompting the eagles to start caring for and feeding the red-tailed hawk as one of their own.

There are a few different possible outcomes for the chick.

“It’d be interesting to monitor and see if they’re actually successful at raising this chick as their own,” Gage-Tomlinson said.

On the other hand, this situation could end with the hawk being eaten by the eagle family, less of a fairy tale ending than birders and local photographers would hope for.

Time will tell for whether the eagles decide to continue raising the hawk as one of its own until it fledges, the point at which young birds’ have large enough feathers to fly. It can take hawks weeks or a couple of months to fledge, while eagles don’t fledge until they’re around 3 months old.

Though rare, this isn’t the first time observers have documented eagles apparently raising a hawk chick in their nest.

Last year, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife reported that an eagle took two red-tailed hawk babies to its nest.

One of them was eaten by an adult eagle, and while the other initially was fed and cared for by the eagles, they eventually became aggressive toward the young hawk, and it ultimately died after being injured and no longer fed.

Last year, CBS Chicago also reported that a bald eagle couple had taken in a baby red-tailed hawk as one of its own.

And two years ago, The Wildlife Society shared live footage in British Columbia of bald eagles raising a red-tailed hawk chick.

Bill Franciscovish, a longtime birder and photographer who has followed bald eagles along the Cambria coast for the past seven years, said earlier he noticed the eagle nest with the a baby hawk earlier this week.

“To think that it started out as a breakfast delivery,” Franciscovish said. “I guess they just decided to feed it rather than eat it.”

When Cambria photographer and birder Elizabeth Appel learned of the unusual nesting situation, she made a point to capture the occasion.

“I think it’s such a privilege and an absolutely amazing thing to be able to witness them raise chicks, and so I’m just in love with the whole thing,” Appel said. “Nature has that serendipitous moment where you see something you can actually get a shot of.”