Anyone who’s been on the back side of Maryville College’s Sutton Science Center may have noticed a curious new structure with an even more curious new resident: Isaac, a male red-tailed hawk, now roosts in the mews between the Sutton outdoor classroom and the Center for Global Engagement.
Isaac’s placement at Maryville College as a future assistant in avian- and biology-themed programming for students of and outside the College was facilitated by Dr. Danielle Lincoln, MC’s chemical hygiene and natural sciences officer.
“I’ve always loved birds and always loved raptors in particular, ever since I read Animorphs as a kid,” Lincoln said. “The inclination was towards falconry, but it just wasn’t feasible then.”
In addition to being a significant financial and time commitment, the primary goal of modern falconry is hunting, which involves the capture and dispatch of game, oftentimes by the handler to minimize suffering. Lincoln found she didn’t have the heart for it and instead turned her attention toward rehabilitation work.
After moving to Tennessee in 2012 to pursue a graduate degree in Chemistry, Lincoln discovered the Clinch River Raptor Center located in Clinton, Tennessee. Almost three decades old, the center worked to rehabilitate injured and ill raptors for release back into the wild. A few that couldn’t be safely released were kept on as educational birds.
Funded by donations and run by volunteers, the center’s staffers were happy to have any extra hands and, through the mid-2010s, Lincoln worked part-time cleaning enclosures, preparing food, picking up raptors from calls in the Knoxville area and taking the educational birds out to local schools and libraries.
When one door closes …
Unfortunately, in 2018 the center began to close. Three decades of donations and steady volunteers dried up as major contributors were forced to step back. Volunteers stopped rehabilitating new birds and started looking into permanent homes for their non-releasable birds.
Lincoln, who had just finished the necessary training, coursework and service hours required for a Special Purpose Possession-Education permit, was asked if she would consider taking in one of the center’s educational rentals, a hawk named Jessie.
There was no need to ask; Lincoln was so “very enamored with the whole thing” that over the course of just one weekend in July, she and some friends built a mews in her backyard to house the hawk and, in August of 2018, Lincoln took possession of Jessie. She thought that would be the end of her involvement with the shuttering Clinch River Raptor Center.
However, in late 2020, she received a call from Lisa Thomison, a friend with whom she had worked at the center who also runs the Owl Ridge Raptor Center. Volunteers at that facility, located in Washburn, Tennessee, were in the process of rehoming and rehabilitating their remaining birds, including one male red-tailed hawk. He’d suffered an injury to his shoulder that meant he couldn’t fly again and couldn’t be released; however, his disposition was friendly and calm enough that Lincoln’s friend thought he would make a great educational bird.
Lincoln couldn’t “in good conscience” take in another raptor. She had neither the time nor the resources to handle it alone, she said, but thought that Maryville College might.
She contacted Vice President and Dean of the College Dr. Daniel Klingensmith first.
While Klingensmith was receptive to the idea of the College housing the hawk, Lincoln still needed the approval of Jeff Ingle, vice president for finance and administration, and Reggie Dailey, then director of the Physical Plant, before the project could proceed.
Klingensmith recommended she write up a formal proposal, which was passed between Lincoln, Ingle, Klingensmith, and Dr. Drew Crain, professor of Biology, “three or four” times before it was accepted. Dailey was happy to approve, but he cautioned that the logistics would be “a nightmare.”
Hurdles
He had no idea how true that statement would be. After all, the informal approvals of College administrators were just the beginning of the official processes required to transport and house a protected migratory bird. As with Jessie, a mews would need to be built and inspected first, and with the inflated price of lumber due to the pandemic, the mounting backlog of work requests at the Physical Plant and an undetermined source of funding, the challenges were daunting.
“I couldn’t do anything until the mews got built besides putting materials together that I could send off later,” Lincoln said. “So, it was a waiting game.”
During that time, Lincoln considered what it would look like if the College brought Isaac to campus, and, more specifically, under whose name he would be permitted.
To keep a protected wildlife species, an individual or organization must be permitted at the state and federal levels. In Tennessee, this means going through both the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Lincoln had three options: apply for a permit in the College’s name; apply for another permit with herself as the primary permittee; or amend her personal permit to accommodate a second hawk in a separate location — in this case, at the College. The last option was the least complicated in terms of paperwork, but Lincoln was still stuck waiting to send the documents until the mews was completed.
‘Howee Bound
That waiting game continued until the Spring of 2022. Since Crain had secured funding to build the mews and source food, newly promoted Physical Plant Director Larry May was able to jumpstart everything.
“Larry came to me in late January and asked if he thought we could build it over Spring Break,” Lincoln said. “And I was like, ‘Yes! Yes, thank you.’”
Across four days of Spring Break 2022, Lincoln and several faculty, student and staff volunteers came together to build the mews “from the ground up.” With it completed, the official work to move Isaac could begin.
After construction was complete, the mews had to be inspected and approved by the TWRA, and scheduling dilemmas meant more delays. At the same time, Lincoln’s application approval moved at its own glacial pace, but by August, the College was ready to bring Isaac to his new home.
Lincoln is currently training Isaac to allow faculty and select students in the mews for cleaning and socialization purposes. Additionally, she is working toward getting him fully glove-trained for educational programs.
“We’re hoping to provide future upperclassmen with the option to work with him for senior study, especially once he’s trained on the glove,” said Lincoln. “It would be really cool, too, to have individuals start helping me with his care their first year, and by the time they graduate, they would have enough hours to apply for their permit.”
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