Julian Cedillo was shopping for a new window Friday morning after a large bird came crashing into Los Nortenos, the Bryan restaurant he manages.
"There was just this really loud bang," he said. "We went to look outside and there was the most beautiful, big hawk just laying on the sidewalk."
Cedillo said the hawk was alive but hurt. A customer took the raptor to the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine.
"It was such a beautiful bird, we really felt sorry for it," Cedillo said. "So he wrapped the bird in a towel and took him to A&M."
The hawk did not survive.
Officials at the vet school said it's fairly common for birds to crash into windows.
"This happens a lot more often than you might think," said Christy Belcher, an instructor at A&M's College of Veterinary Medicine. "To them, glass just looks like more open area."
Belcher said the vet school treats birds that have been in similar accidents at least once a week.
Nadia Stegeman, the veterinarian who treated the injured hawk, said it's rare for a bird to survive such a hard collision.
"When it comes to hawk versus window, window normally wins," she said. "The way to think about it is that you don't see glass structures in nature, so they don't know how to look for it."
Belcher and Stegeman agreed that placing dark decals on windows helps birds recognize the barrier.
Belcher said the vet school is generally the best place to take injured wildlife.
"There's no charge at all to the public, and we have someone here until at least 10 p.m.," she said. There is also an emergency clinic for after-hours calls, she said.
Rehabilitating an injured bird can be a lengthy process, they said.
"In order for a hawk to survive in the wild, they have to be perfect hunters," Stegeman said. "If there's even any flap in their wings when they fly, prey will hear it and the hawk will starve."
But Stegeman said the school has a high success rate with treating injured hawks and other large birds and releases most back into the wild.
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