WJLA:

A Houston-area taxi driver picked up a strange passenger on Friday night as Hurricane Harvey was barreling down on the Texas coast, a Cooper’s hawk seeking shelter from the hurricane.

Many people in Texas relied on the kindness of others to evacuate and stay safe during the Category 4 hurricane. The same can be said for Harvey the Hurricane Hawk.

“He just kind of hopped on in and doesn’t want to leave,” taxi driver William Bruso said in the first of a series of YouTube videos featuring Harvey the Hawk. “He looks kind of scared.”

Bruso drove the hawk back to his home giving him plenty of opportunities to fly away, but Harvey had settled on a place to ride out the storm.

Harvey spent the night with Bruso watching the news, eating snacks, relaxed and hunkered down for the storm.

On Saturday morning, Bruso reached out to the Texas Wildlife Rescue Center (TWRC) who took Harvey to rehabilitate.

Accipiter cooperi

More hawk videos.

The Library of Congress isn’t sure, but they think that they have a Cooper’s Hawk (Accipter cooperii) currently in residence in the main reading room. (You’d think there’d be a copy of Roger Tory Peterson in there somewhere.)

They also don’t know how to catch it.

The preferred method of reducing raptors to possession is a device called a bal-chatri, a small wood or metal cage covered with loops of monofilament (in the old days, horsehair). You place a pigeon in the cage, drop the cage on a reading room table, and go away. The hawk goes for the pigeon and gets his feet entangled in the loops. You return and there’s your hawk.