Skyrim player accidentally drives hawks to extinction and can't bring them back

One of the defining features of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is the almost complete absence of lasting consequences for player actions. You can kill, steal, and destroy entire factions, yet the world continues as if nothing happened. However, one player discovered a rare exception to this rule, involving the most harmless inhabitants of Solitude.

A gamer going by SoftPaintedEye shared an unusual problem – at the beginning of their playthrough, they shot down all the hawks above Skyrim's capital for feathers needed in alchemy and archery practice. The player expected the birds to respawn eventually, but that never happened. Now their character has reached level 126, and the sky over Solitude remains empty. Waiting over 30 in-game days and console commands like disable/enable, resurrect, and recycleactor didn't help – at best, they managed to spawn a dead hawk on the ground.

The reason for this behavior lies in the technical implementation of birds. According to the wiki, hawks in the game aren't full-fledged creatures but animated static objects moving along predetermined paths. Because of this, standard respawn mechanics don't apply to them.

As the community jokes – now the player has to live with the knowledge they drove at least one virtual species to extinction. Though it's unclear if there's any way to hunt hawks responsibly. Still, it makes you think about how many other creatures have been wiped out across various games.

The only working solution players suggested is using the player.placeatme command with the hawk's ID after ascending into the air by disabling collision (tcl). However, such birds may behave incorrectly, get stuck at location boundaries, or simply not move. An alternative option is installing a mod that adds new hawks or improves fauna overall.