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Stansbury Park residents and their pets on the lookout for hawk

Posted at 10:22 PM, Sep 04, 2017
and last updated 2017-09-05 00:22:49-04

STANSBURY PARK – Residents in Stansbury Park look out for each other, and sometimes need to look up.

“Yesterday, my neighbor sent me a message, and said ‘hey be on the lookout, watch your pups because there’s a hawk over here,” said Nicole Hackbarth. She said her neighbor was sitting on her backyard porch Sunday morning drinking coffee when a hawk suddenly swooped down towards their Yorkie.

“It kind of freaked me out,” Hackbarth added. That’s because she has two Yorkies of her own. She said that the Veterinarian had warned her of some of the dangers she might encounter with a smaller dog.

“When we first got her, she was a pound and a half,” Hackbarth added. “Now, she’s five pounds. I have been warned by my vet, be careful, so, when my neighbor told me about that hawk I was like oh my!”

Reaching out to an expert at the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center she identified the hawk in the photo as a Swainson Hawk. She said that in rare cases, where food is running short, a bird might attack a small animal, but can’t carry anything over half its body weight. That would rule out the possibility of most Yorkies getting carried off.

Either way, wildlife experts encourage owners to keep their dogs on leashes when outside, even in the backyard.

“Normally, they’re just free roaming,” Hackbarth said of her dogs. “Now, we had to close their doggy doors.”