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ShareTimely surgery by Kalyan doc on its injured leg saves the rare bird
What does one do if a hawk is found with a broken leg in your backyard? Dr Prashant Sonavane, an orthopedic surgeon based in Kalyan, who found one on Monday morning, rushed it to his private nursing home where he performed an emergency surgery on the bird.
"We saw it dangling upside down from a barb wire on a fence outside my house," said Sonavane. Luckily, the orthopedist used his expertise to treat the bird's broken leg. "It was a case of compound fracture on the right leg. I repositioned the leg and gave the bird a few stitches. I have now attached a splint to the leg, which should come off in some weeks," said Sonavane.
Once the operation was done, Sonavane was faced with a bigger task - to find someone willing to look after the bird. I called the Fire Brigade, who gave me the address of a bird-lover in South Mumbai.
"However, the hawk was in a state of shock, and the bird-expert I consulted said that it wouldn't survive unless I kept it under my care," said the good Samaritan, who then decided to take the bird back home and treat it himself. "So far, my interest in Nature has been restricted to watching television channels like Discovery and Animal Planet. This, however, gave me the chance to save a bird's life," said the compassionate doctor.
"This is a juvenile shikra," said bird expert Shashank Dalvi. There are records of shikra breeding near Mumbai, and some of the population migrates into the city. Hence their numbers increase in the winter, said Dalvi. Shikras feeds on other small birds, rodents, garden lizards.
"Some people even train shikhras. Falconry is a sport in which trained hawks, mainly shikras, are used," said Dalvi, adding that hawks are believed to have vision, about eight times acute than humans with good
eyesight.
