Mother Shields Her 2-Year-Old Daughter From Hawk In Backyard Aerial Attack

Heads up! Hawk coming to-yah. Are we over the "Hawk Tuah Girl" yet? If so, I apologize for making light of this story with a pun referencing her infamous catch phrase. Let's quickly move past it and get to this wild story out of Needham, Massachusetts, where a red-tailed hawk swooped dangerously close to a family enjoying their backyard. Maya Lim was out in her yard with her two-year-old daughter when, surprisingly, a hawk went on the offensive. Luckily, Lim was able to see the large bird coming and had a few second to shield her daughter, who the hawk may have been targeting. She told WCVB 5 that it was a truly terrifying couple of moments: "I was just playing with my daughter and I saw this huge bird coming for us. My first instinct was to just protect her and get her away. Everything happened so fast." According to the family, and other neighbors, the red-tailed hawk has been very present in the neighborhood over the summer. That leads John Blakeman, a raptor biologist who has studied predatory birds for over 50 years, to think that the hawk is a mother that has kids of her own that she's looking after. Blakeman said that the aerial attack by the hawk was likely a territorial thing: "I've pretty much seen it all, but I have never seen this. This is uncommon for red-tails. She was not trying to kill the little girl and take her off to feed the babies or anything like that. She was just being a good red-tailed hawk mother defending her territory." https://www.instagram.com/reel/C_mEUXEo9uu/?igsh=bHZ0MjAya2QwN29r As you can see, a security camera just so happened to be pointed in the right direction to capture the scary moment. The hawk didn't make contact with the mother or daughter, but it apparently came "within inches." So technically it was a mother-versus-mother encounter, and Maya Lim's instincts kept her two-year-old from getting hurt. A longer version of the news story and the scary security footage can be viewed below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CX2rTltwaWE