A red-tailed hawk stands in the nest with an egg and a baby, an eya, on Tuesday, April 30, 2024.
About five weeks after being laid, a fuzzy, adorable little baby hawk has now hatched and is being cared for by its parents in their nest over Texas 114 in Irving.
For several years now, red-tailed hawks have built a nest on a TxDOT traffic camera platform at Texas 114 and Rochelle Boulevard.
The camera at that location is often rotated in the spring to keep a watchful eye on the pair of hawks who roost on the tower. Last month, the female hawk laid a couple of eggs. After 4-5 weeks of incubation, the baby hawks, or eyas, were expected to break out of their shell sometimes this week.
Tuesday morning NBC 5 staffers noticed one of the babies had hatched and it wasn't too long after that when we saw one of the hawks bring in the baby's lunch -- a rat.
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The hawk's diet consists largely of rodents but they are also known to eat squirrels, snakes, bats, frogs and other birds -- you never know what's on the menu. Because of that, you never know what you're going to see when watching the live stream, and, just as a fair warning, feeding time can be graphic.
The eyas typically leave the nest 6-7 weeks after hatching, according to audubon.org, but they are not capable of strong flight for another couple of weeks after that.
If you see a traffic report in the stream above, the hawks will return soon. If our stream is not active above, the best way to see the baby hawk is on TxDOT's website (click here). When the camera isn't monitoring traffic conditions, it's facing the new family.
