I found an injured hawk or owl. Who do I call?
The short answer
Do not pick it up. Watch it from a distance, note exactly where it is, and call a rehabilitator who is permitted for raptors — that is a different permit from the one most of us hold.
If you cannot find one quickly, call us at 901-340-6534 and we will help you find the right place. We are not permitted for raptors and cannot legally take your hawk, but we know who can.
Why this needs a specific kind of rehabber
Hawks, owls, eagles, falcons and vultures are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and eagles carry a second layer of protection on top of that. Rehabilitating them requires a federal permit from the US Fish and Wildlife Service in addition to a state permit from TWRA. Neither one substitutes for the other.
This surprises people, and it is worth stating plainly: a Tennessee rehabilitator permitted for mammals holds no federal authority over birds. Taking, holding or transporting a raptor for rehabilitation without that federal permit is a violation regardless of how good the intentions are. So when a rehabber tells you they cannot take your owl, they are not brushing you off. They are telling you the truth about what they are allowed to do.
Here is the part that works in your favor. Federal regulation specifically allows any person who finds a sick, injured or orphaned migratory bird to take possession of it for immediate transport to a permitted rehabilitator or a licensed veterinarian. You, the finder, are cleared to drive it there. That authorization covers transport and nothing else — there is no version of it that covers keeping the bird until it seems better.
How to find the right place
Rehabilitator directories go stale, and a wrong phone number in an emergency is worse than no number, so we would rather point you at the sources that stay current than print a list that rots.
TWRA maintains a licensed rehabilitator directory organized by species. Search it for raptors and start with the closest.
The Tennessee Wildlife Federation also publishes a rehabilitator directory.
Memphis and Shelby County do have raptor-permitted facilities. Call us at 901-340-6534 and we will tell you who is currently taking birds — that changes with capacity and season, and we track it.
For an eagle, or for any raptor you suspect was shot, poisoned or trapped, call US Fish and Wildlife Service law enforcement at 1-844-397-8477.
The feet are the danger, not the beak
Almost everyone gets this backwards.
A raptor kills with its feet. The talons are driven by enormous flexor strength and a tendon-locking mechanism, and once a foot closes it does not let go quickly or voluntarily. Punctures are deep, frequently all the way through a hand, and heavily contaminated with bacteria from prey. Great horned owls and the larger hawks are the ones that put people in urgent care.
The beak is for tearing tissue that is already dead. It will bite, but it does not lock and it does not have anything like the closing force of the feet.
The standard professional guidance for untrained handlers is not to handle at all. The raptor management manual used by researchers says outright that people unwilling or unable to do the restraint properly should keep the bird under observation until someone with the right equipment and expertise arrives. Take that advice. A hawk on the ground is not going far, and an untrained capture attempt injures the bird as often as it injures the person.
If a rehabber asks you to contain it
Only do this if someone qualified has walked you through it and you have thick leather gloves — welding or heavy garden gloves.
Drop a towel, blanket or jacket over the bird first. It will grab the fabric with its feet, which is exactly what you want, and covering its head calms it dramatically.
Wrap it gently with the wings folded against the body.
Put it in a ventilated cardboard box or a solid-sided pet carrier only slightly larger than the bird, lined with newspaper and a towel for grip.
Never a wire cage or a barred crate. Flight and tail feathers break against the bars, and a raptor with broken primaries cannot be released until it molts them out. That turns a two-week case into a year in captivity.
Close it securely, drape a towel over it, and put it somewhere warm and quiet.
No radio in the car. No looking at it. No photos.
Never use a gunnysack, a chicken wire cage, a live trap, or straw and hay bedding — hay carries fungal spores that cause a respiratory infection raptors are very prone to.
Resist checking on it. Stress genuinely kills these birds.
No food, no water. This one is not negotiable.
Most injured raptors arrive dehydrated or starving, and sudden food or water can kill them outright.
A dehydrated or cold bird has a gut that has largely stopped moving, so food sits and ferments rather than digesting. Water forced into the mouth of a stressed bird goes into the airway and causes aspiration pneumonia, which is usually fatal. And a severely emaciated bird fed too quickly can go into metabolic collapse — refeeding a starved animal is a medical procedure, not a kindness.
There is also a practical reason: a bird with a full crop cannot safely be anesthetized, so feeding it delays the surgery it may need.
Hamburger, dog food, bread and milk are all actively harmful. So is a bowl of water in the box.
What usually put it there
Cars, most often. Raptors hunt road verges because mown grass strips are full of rodents, and owls fly low across roads at night. Scavenging birds get drawn onto the road by existing roadkill and struck in turn.
Windows. Cooper's hawks and sharp-shinned hawks chase songbirds at feeders and follow them into glass at full speed.
Rat poison, which is worth understanding because it is preventable. Second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides are designed to kill in a single feeding but to work slowly, so a poisoned rat keeps eating and keeps moving for days, accumulating many times a lethal dose in its liver while becoming progressively easier to catch. The raptor eats the loaded rat and the poison accumulates in its own liver. These compounds block the vitamin K cycle, so the bird stops producing clotting factors and bleeds internally — or survives with impaired clotting and then bleeds out from an injury it would otherwise have walked away from. A study of over nine hundred raptor carcasses across North America found these poisons to be the cause or a major contributing factor in more than two hundred and sixty deaths. If you have a rodent problem, snap traps and exclusion do not travel up the food chain.
Lead, especially for eagles. In a study of over twelve hundred eagles across thirty-eight states, nearly half showed evidence of repeated lead exposure, and the modeling suggested it is suppressing bald eagle population growth by close to four percent a year. The source is ammunition fragments in carcasses and gut piles left in the field. Non-lead ammunition solves it.
Eagles are a special case
Do not touch it. Do not attempt to move it. Do not attempt a capture.
Under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, take is defined broadly enough to include molest or disturb, and penalties are serious. An untrained rescue attempt on an eagle carries real legal exposure on top of real physical danger.
Call a raptor-permitted facility, call TWRA, and for anything that looks like it was shot, poisoned or trapped, call Fish and Wildlife Service law enforcement at 1-844-397-8477. Stay at a distance and keep people and dogs away until someone arrives.
If you find a dead eagle, the same call applies, and do not take anything from it. Keeping an eagle feather without a permit is itself a violation. Feathers and remains go to the National Eagle Repository, which distributes them for Native American religious use — that is why the rule is as strict as it is.
Who we are
Out of the Woods Wildlife Rescue & Rehab is a wildlife rehabilitation nonprofit in Memphis, permitted by the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency. We are not permitted for raptors and we will not pretend otherwise — but the worst outcome for an injured hawk is a caller who gives up after two dead phone numbers. Text 901-340-6534 and we will get you to the right people.
Sources: 50 CFR 21.76. Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, 16 USC 668. US Fish and Wildlife Service migratory bird permits. Raptor Research and Management Techniques, Raptor Research Foundation. California Raptor Center, UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. Elliott et al. 2024, Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry. Slabe et al. 2022, Science. TWRA rehabilitator directory.
We are wildlife rehabilitators, not lawyers or veterinarians.