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This work by Matthew Wills is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Backyard and Beyond
Starting out from Brooklyn, an amateur naturalist explores our world. "The place to observe nature is where you are."—John Burroughs
This work by Matthew Wills is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Backyard and Beyond 
As much as we’d like to cheer the hawk dining on rat, almost anything else would be better for the hawk. Rats carry a toxin load from our attempts to control or eliminate rat populations. They develop an immunity over long time periods which allows them to survive with the poison in their bodies. The hawks get some of that poison, and there are several kinds, when they eat rat. It bioaccumulates until it debilitates or kills the hawk. This is what happened to Barry, the Barred Owl in Central Park. She had half a dozen kinds of rat bait in her system which attacked her nervous system. That’s why she flew into the truck. At least that part was quick.