Baby Hawks Rescued After Tree Felled

    Two baby hawks are back in their 'nest' this week, after a savvy resident and quick-thinking City of Umatilla public works employees combined to save them.
   It all began when the city took down a tree as part of a water line project in the area of Tennessee Avenue and Pearl Street.
   "We had to take a tree out to put a water line in," said Umatilla Public Works Director Vaughan Nilson. Later in the day, a resident in the area heard the baby hawks chirping in debris. It was nighttime, so the property owner took the birds inside and kept them warm. Contact was made with the city, and after a quick call to a wildlife rescue - which provided instruction on how to make a new nest, a new home was fashioned out of a milk crate and leaves from the downed tree.
   “The mother was circling the whole time,” Nilson said of the process of getting the nest mounted in a nearby tree. “She came back within an hour.”
   Officials kept an eye on the nest to make sure the mother would accept the new situation, and it appeared she did.
   “I saw her with a snake or lizard in her mouth feeding them,” Nilson said.