Violet, star of NYC hawk cam, mourned

Violet, the red-tailed hawk from Manhattan that bewitched webcam viewers all year with her life and motherhood, was being mourned Friday after dying of a heart attack a day earlier.

She seemed to be recovering from surgery to amputate her swollen, dangling right leg when she had a heart attack, said Cathy Horvath, a licensed wildlife rehabilitator who, along with her husband, Bobby, captured Violet on Christmas Eve in Washington Square Park to be treated.

A Nassau County veterinarian, an orthopedic surgeon, did CPR on Violet for 20 minutes, but to no avail. She died shortly before 3 p.m. Thursday.

Subsequent X-rays showed her left leg had fractures on both sides, a "shock" to everyone, said Cathy Horvath, of North Massapequa.

"She came through the surgery fine," Horvath said. "She was sitting up, fluffing her feathers, shivering like when you wake up from anesthesia. It's just her heart stopped.

"My vet did some X-rays. We saw that her good leg was broken where the femur is. It was mind-boggling that she was able to stand up and still carry on."

In the spring Violet lived at New York University, where she and her mate Bobby had a nest on the 12th floor, outside the university president's office. In April, The New York Times mounted a hawk cam that turned the hawks' lives and the subsequent birth of Pip in May into a wildlife reality show. But as early as October 2010, there were concerns about Violet's right leg, which may have been bitten or injured during her hunts. The swelling pushed a metal wildlife identification band up her leg, cutting into her circulation, Horvath said.

The rehabilitator believes the injury to Violet's left leg happened last month, because the bone showed signs of calcification. She surmised that Violet was recuperating when she was missing for about two weeks last month.

But when she was visible, she put on a strong face, Cathy Horvath said, and "sucked up her injury" as she took care of Pip and hunted.

Now, the bird's body is in cold storage until the Horvaths and Violet's fans decide what to do. Fans on Horvath's Facebook page have already decided to collect money for some kind of memorial.

Cathy Horvath thinks a statue of Violet and a plaque would be fitting.

""She showed everybody her life, and I think people should celebrate what she did and how strong she was," Horvath said.

Horvath also expressed dismay at not getting approval in the spring to treat Violet for her leg injury when she was nesting on the New York University ledge. "This has been such a long haul for us," she said, "watching the cam and seeing her getting debilitated and for nothing."

John Beckman, an NYU spokesman, defended the school, saying it had sought advice from wildlife experts from the state's Department of Environmental Conservation who advised against attempting to capture the hawk.

Those and other experts determined that "Violet was successfully caring for her young. An attempt at capture would have disrupted that care and posed additional risks to Violet and her hatchlings," said Michael Bopp, a DEC spokesman, in a statement.

"There's a community of people who came to have an intimate view of this majestic raptor -- as a bird and as a mother -- and this is sad news for all of us," Beckman said.