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And the man who saved her was the one who got to let her go.

Late Thursday morning, ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ native Chris Hatfield opened the lid on a corrugated plastic pet carrier and gently tipped it forward until the roughly 2-pound bird slid out onto the grass at Rancho Valencia Recreation Area, a small neighborhood park near I-10 and Valencia Road, a mile or two from where she was rescued.

As soon as Hatfield backed away with the carrier, the hawk took off in the opposite direction, landing in the high branches of a mesquite tree above the playground about 150 feet away. Then she shook her feathers and began preening herself.

“That’s so frickin’ cool,� Hatfield said.

When he first spotted the hawk on Jan. 25, she was hunched over and shivering about 8 feet from the pavement on I-10 between Valencia and Palo Verde Road.

He circled back, scooped the bird up in a blanket and drove home with her bundled on the passenger seat of his Jeep. She spent the next 24 hours warming up and drying off in Hatfield’s garage and on a nest he made for her out of towels on his kitchen table.

She perched calmly on his gear-shifting arm as he drove her to the ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ Wildlife Center the following afternoon.

Dr. Ashley Kramer, a veterinarian at the center, said the hawk had a severe head injury, most likely from a collision with a vehicle on the interstate, but no broken bones.

She had blood in her right ear and behind her right eye. Kramer said the bird’s docile behavior around Hatfield was probably the result of a serious concussion.

“He’s not the hawk whisperer, unfortunately. She was definitely dazed and confused,� Kramer said. “She just didn’t know what was going on around her.�

Kramer said the hawk is a full-grown adult, at least 3 years old, and apparently pretty tough. X-rays of the bird showed signs of a previous injury, a broken leg that healed on its own.

It took about four days for the hawk to emerge from her stupor. She has been growing more wild and feisty ever since, as the center’s staff fed her mice and medication to help her heal.

Hatfield went to visit her on Wednesday, but she didn’t want anything to do with him.

“She’s just a normal wild bird now. She was pretty much avoiding everyone,� Kramer said.

“She’s a lot different, definitely a lot more wild,� Hatfield agreed. “I don’t think she would sit on my arm and drive to the wildlife center with me now.�

Kramer drove the hawk to the park on Thursday, and she said the bird was bouncing around inside her carrier the whole way there.

After the hawk was released, Kramer and Hatfield stood in the grass and watched her for a while.

“Hopefully she had a mate in this area that she can find so they can start making babies together,� Kramer said.

The hawk spent her first 15 minutes of freedom sitting in the mesquite tree, looking rumpled and a little out of sorts.

Then she spread her wings and took off to the east, flying low above the roofs of the tightly spaced tract homes next to the park.

She had been in the air for less than a minute when another red-tailed hawk appeared out of nowhere and began to chase her, dive-bombing her several times from above.

But what looked like aggression at first — a potential fight over territory, unlikely to favor the newcomer — soon turned into something else. The two hawks began circling together, rising higher and higher into the sky on a column of warm air.

“She maybe just flew away with her mate,� Kramer said, as the two birds vanished in the distance.

Hatfield grinned. “That’s a hell of an end to the story,� he said.