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How do you return a baby eagle back to its nest 120 feet in the air, while keeping the taloned, panicked infant calm?
Very carefully.
The Cascades Raptor Center’s Jesse Pline did just that on Tuesday, when the certified wildlife rehabilitator carried the bird, wrapped in a towel and wearing a falconry hood to block its senses, as he and a city of Eugene arborist rode a boom crane up to the nest.
The eaglet was successfully reunited with its parents and sibling, ending a saga that started last week and drew the concern of local eagle lovers, who have been tracking these specific birds in a dedicated Facebook group.
Last Thursday morning, the eaglet lost her balance from the nest in a tree near Campbell Community Center in Skinner Butte Park, and fell about 3 feet to a lower tree branch, said Julie Collins, the executive director of the Cascades Raptor Center.
The eaglet stayed in the branch for about two days, receiving food from its parents and trying to flutter back up into the nest. On Saturday, it fell to the ground, where Cascades Raptor Center staff picked it up. At the center, it received medical attention — though staff found no injuries — and plenty of trout, donated by Lane County fishermen.
“We were giggling that it’s probably going to be the heavier of the siblings by the time we get it back up in the nest because of all the fish we need to feed the baby,” Collins said.
The eaglet had an extra day to eat up: KLCC reported that the earlier attempt the previous day, Monday, literally fell short, as a boom crane brought to site could reach only about 30 feet below the nest.
The longer boom crane used on Tuesday came from local equipment and tool rental company Sunbelt Rentals, which provided it free. The estimated $2,000 it would normally cost to rent the machine, Collins said, was not something the nonprofit would have been able to afford otherwise.
This is the first bald eagle renesting the Cascades Raptor Center has done in roughly a decade. Usually, Collins said, the nest is destroyed, or in a location that either her staff or tree-climbing rescues can’t safely reach, especially when considering the defensiveness of adult bald eagles with talons trying to protect their young.
After the unsuccessful attempt the day before, options were limited if Tuesday’s renesting did not work out, Pline said. The fallback plans would be to wait until the eaglet was an older fledgling to try and reunite them — a risk if the bird was not reaccepted — or to raise the eagle in captivity.
“Wild birds and wild animals of all kinds are best raised by their parents,” Pline said. “As wildlife rehabilitators, we are professionals in raising healthy, successful individuals to release back into the wild. But no matter how good we are, we can never do as good a job as parents.”
Watching the renesting live
A modest crowd of onlookers cheered at the sight of flapping wings once the bird was safely back in its nest. Passersby filtered into the park to ask what the commotion was about, but some people stopped by to watch the family reunite live.
Ann Good and her daughter Jacqueline Perkins were in town from Monterey, California, for the graduation of Good’s granddaughter — and Perkins’ niece — from South Eugene High School. They are both birdwatchers and heard about the unfolding effort to renest the eaglet — and so they stopped by the park during their Eugene vacation.
“It’s unbelievable,” said Good, who had seen bald eagles before, but never that close. “It’s something that you kind of dream about seeing.”
Stray bird lovers were not the only witnesses. The parent eagles were perched in a nearby tree, watching the hubbub gathering on the grounds around the nest. They occasionally flew through the air, but did not intervene or attack either Cascades Raptor Center staff or the city arborist helping the boom crane navigate the foliage.
Renesting a bald eagle, like other large raptors, takes particular care: Pline called out the bird’s blood feathers in particular, growing feathers in young birds with active blood flow that can be painful for the bird if mishandled. Then there’s the issue of physically getting the eaglet into the nest without disturbing the other bird that had not fallen, which Pline was worried about in particular.
Pline’s speciality is in renesting raptors, but he had never been a part of a bald eagle renesting until today. The career milestone did not pass without a souvenir.
Before placing it back in the nest, he took off the eaglet’s falconry hood — which had blocked its vision for the stressful transport — and the bird bit him on the upper lip.
“It was my fault for not having my face shield down,” he said. “That’s why we always remind people every single wild animal has the capacity to bite, scratch, et cetera. It’s part of respecting wildlife.”
But the work, big and small, doesn’t end in wildlife rehab even after an eaglet bites you on the face. Pline had to get going: there was a hummingbird renesting to get to that same day.
