Empty Nest: TxDOT Cameras Capture Baby Hawk Grow Up Over Irving Highway

When you're on Texas 114 at Rochelle Boulevard in Irving, you can't see all the eyes that are on you.

The Texas Department of Transportation has a camera so the operations center can keep an eye out for trouble, but there's another set of eyes watching like a hawk.

Red-tailed hawks have made the TxDOT camera pole their Irving penthouse home for the past 15 years, where mothers usually nest their eggs and raise their eventual babies.

The baby hawk we've streamed online over the spring recently flew away after nesting over the busy DFW highway.

"Every year we have some red-tailed hawks that come and roost on our camera at 114 and Rochelle," Tony Hartzel, TxDOT Dallas District Spokesman, said.

"It's like clockwork," Hartzel said, pointing out they come every spring. "And so here we are, the first day of summer, and the baby has flown away."

Hartzel said the hawks don't officially have names.

"But the one that has stuck over the years, the mother hawk is called 'Mama Rochelle,'" Hartzel said. "One of the interesting things that you can see is the parents bringing all types of different food for the babies."

A hawk diet consists largely of rodents. Some years there have been as many as three babies, called eyas, to feed. This year there was just one.

"Over the weekend it flew the coop, so everybody here is excited and kind of proud," Hartzel said. "The traffic operations groups will check on the hawks every so often, see what they're doing, by rotating that camera."

By law, they can't disturb the hawks while they're nesting, so they just observe the wildlife high above the traffic.

"This is a nice little diversion," Hartzel said. "Makes you stop and think, and realize there's more. There's more out there."

TxDOT warns motorists should not stop to try to look at the hawks because it's unsafe. The best way to watch is from TxDOT cameras.

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