After losing one fledgling Red-tailed Hawk from this year’s nest on High Street to traffic and seeing a second taken into ‘protective custody’ after it was mistaken as injured, I spent the summer wondering if the third member of the brood was still somewhere in the city.

It’s impossible to be sure — there are a lot of Red-tailed Hawk nests out there, and a lot of juveniles out and about — but on Monday morning I encountered the hawk pictured above and below along South Canal Street in the city’s South Holyoke neighborhood.

I was driving along, planning to stop to check the canal for herons and Red-winged Blackbirds, when the hawk burst over the canal bank and landed on a chain-link fence. I had time to observe it for about 20 minutes as it made a few futile attempts to chase House Sparrows and moved between a number of perches, from fences to utility poles to brick buildings.

The hawk still showed a lot of the awkwardness and lack of common sense of a young hawk (at one point taking a cruise down the middle of the street, no more than a foot above the ground). And it was hard not to think that the bird is in a real race against the clock; unless it perfects its hunting skills soon, it’s unlikely to survive its journey to adulthood.

Was it one of the hawks I’d observed at the nest earlier this year? It’s hard to say, but it feels reassuring to think that it is.