Hawk rescued from netting at Topgolf being evaluated at SeaWorld

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. - A red-tailed hawk caught in the netting at Topgolf near Orlando's International Drive is being evaluated by a rescue team from SeaWorld Orlando.

“I think it took all of us to pull this off,” Mike Schaber with SeaWorld Rescue said. “The bird was up fairly high.”

Orange County Fire Rescue got a call from Topgolf about the hawk around 8 a.m. Wednesday. It was stuck in the netting that surrounds the golfing facility. It was stuck about 50 feet from the ground.

“The area was just too difficult to get a fire truck in there, so there were some logistical challenges,” Mike Jachles with Orange County Fire Rescue said.

A rescue team from SeaWorld came to help out.

“Once we got our hands on it, it was just scared and tired from hanging,” Schaber said. “Just from my quick visual, it didn’t look like it was terribly injured. No obvious trauma or fractures that I could see.”

The rescue teams said the bird was stuck for more than four hours. They said structures like the netting at Topgolf can get in the way for birds. But, they were not expecting a call like this one.

“A lot of it is human error,” Schaber said. “We are kind of causing it. Some of the rescues we do are kind of man involved, but that was kind of unusual. It seemed it went pretty smoothly. It took a lot of us.”

The bird is in SeaWorld’s care right now. The plan is to do some tests and checks on it to make sure it’s okay before releasing it back into the wild.