Big-hearted hack saves hurt hawk on FDR
Picked up raptor by road, drove holding it until he found cop
A hawk-eyed cabbie with a heart of gold stopped to help a young bird of prey that got stuck on a major Manhattan highway Tuesday.
The taxi driver is being hailed as a hero by birders for his kind action, which saved the life of the injured red hawk discovered on the side of the FDR Drive in the early morning.
“I wish I had met the taxi cab driver,” said Rita McMahon, the director of the Wild Bird Fund, who is caring for the injured hawk, now appropriately named Taxi.
“He really deserves great credit,” she said.
The cabbie was driving down the FDR Drive and “dared to stop and scoop up the enormous bird,” the Wild Bird Fund reported via Twitter.
“He then held onto the bird with one hand and drove all the way to Brooklyn with the other,” McMahon said.
In Brooklyn, the cabbie finally flagged down a cop and handed the animal over to the officer, but never left his name, McMahon said.
The officer put the bird in a cage and drove it back into Manhattan to the Wild Bird Fund.
“The Hawk arrives at WBF in (a) patrol car!” the group tweeted Tuesday.
“(The officers) went from one place to the other before they found out who to bring it to,” McMahon said.
The beautiful young Taxi — who is less than three years old — appears to be on the mend, but a veterinarian will make the final decision on Wednesday, McMahon said.
If the bird is given a clean bill of health, it will be released in Central Park, she said.
McMahon believes that the hawk was stunned when the cabbie came across it — probably after being hit by a car or slamming into a glass window of a skyscraper near the highway.
That’s why Taxi was so amicable when it came to being picked up and held, she said.
If Taxi had been fully conscious, the bird would have clawed into the cabbie “and not let go” she said.
“It’s not something we recommend — holding onto a hawk while driving,” she joked.
Other birders were amazed by the cab driver’s courage.
“Immature Red-Tailed Hawk? VERY daring!” attorney and bird watcher Sheridan Brown tweeted Tuesday. “Now we KNOW NYC taxi drivers have nerves of steel.”
The Taxi & Limousine Commission is trying to track down the bird-loving but publicity-shy cabbie, an agency spokesman said.