BY COLIN MIXSON
He’s living on a wing and a prayer.
A Brooklyn hawk remains on the brink of death after it was found poisoned in Prospect Park near the LeFrak ice skating rink on March 26.
The bird of prey feasted on a rat contaminated by rodenticide, a common poison that often causes collateral damage as it gets kicked up the food chain, according to a Queens firefighter, who’s nursing the bird back to health.
“It obviously ate a poisoned rodent,” said Bobby Horvath, who rehabilitates ailing animals when he’s not fighting fires in Far Rockaway. “It’s unfortunately very common.”
Prospect Park Alliance Forestry Technician Marty Woess phoned Horvath after spotting the predator’s failed attempt to take flight by the ice skating rink near Ocean Avenue on Tuesday — a sure sign of trouble, according to the fire-fighting wildlife rescuer.
The firefighter, who operates the Wildlife in Need of Rescue group alongside his wife, Kathy Horvath, collected the critter and ferried it back to his Long Island rehabilitation center, where he’s been pumping the poisoned bird with a cocktail of Vitamin K, fluids, and nutritional supplements ever since, he said.
By Thursday, the poison hadn’t felled the downy hunter, but he remained on the brink, and there’s still no guarantee the feathered fowl won’t succumb to the deadly toxins, Horvath said.
“The prognosis isn’t good for any of these animals,” said Horvath.
And the sick bird’s plight is not unique to Brooklyn’s Backyard, where the Parks Department suspended use of rodenticide-laced bait in response to another hawk, which died tragically after eating a poisoned rodent in 2017. Agency spokeswoman Maeri Ferguson confirmed that the department continues to limit its rodent killing tactics to dry ice and snap traps, which pose little threat to the meadow’s avian residents.
But the sight of little black bait boxes near the stoops of nearby row houses remains common around the borough, according to Horvath, who noted that, while hawks prefer to nest in Prospect Park, they can range far and wide in search of food.
“The bird’s aren’t locked into Prospect Park,” he said. “They can flay anywhere, and they can hunt.”
