A death in the family
Bugger!!
The mother eagle at Norfolk Botanical Garden was hit by a plane and killed this morning.
The eaglets are alone on the nest; the father is in a tree nearby. (They’ll be ok. If the father can’t provide food the eaglets will be removed. They’re almost old enough to feed themselves anyway.)
Dammit.
Update: more here. (Starts with horrible goddy ad though. You’ve been warned.)
I’m stunned and heartbroken. So they will take care of the eaglets? I kind of had the impression that they wouldn’t interfere. I feel a little better. Poor daddy eagle.
Dave, yes, they will. They’re pretty interventionist – they band them for instance. Last year when a nearly fledged eaglet fell out of the nest (gliding down to land unhurt), they put her back the next day. (That is, they hired a professional climber to put her back. Must have been quite a feat.)
When I read this I laughed.
I think that probably makes me a bad person, or a Canadian, or both.
Ah well.
@ Ben Nelson
?
Ben Nelson-
Srsly? That seems kind of dysfunctional to me. And even if that’s what you felt, why did you have to post it?
A reaction against sentimental anthropomorphism perhaps? Not really all that necessary, I should think.
And it’s regrettable even without any sent. anth. – the Cam was a brilliant educational tool and now it’s defunct for this year; the rearing of the eaglets is disrupted; the breeding success of this pair is finished. Good news for the local fish and squirrels, but…
Oh, I agree, it is pretty dysfunctional.
But then I imagine it — this rare beautiful bird, the bald eagle, who has just given birth to a trio of delightful chicks — a symbol of hope and grace and perseverance — member of a species that was only 20 years ago on the endangered species list, and who only now (after decades of effort) has found a good chance at survival — who we’ve all been rightly admiring for the past week — spread her mighty wings, soared with the current, and into a jet engine.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
The male eagle just returned to the empty nest with a fish. This is making me so sad.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!
The mods are all blubbing.
He’s gone. He just took off.
God, that was horrible.
My heart is breaking all over again, to see him all alone and confused. Sigh.
Yes. That was not fun.
I was handy for the extraction this morning, and recorded the details from the webcam with screen-capture video software. The clips can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-MUBUD5wVo
It’s a shame, but then again, the Wildlife Center of Virginia is probably the most progressive rehab center on the east coast – the young are in excellent hands.
From the article: “Maintaining them as a family unit and releasing them together when they are ready to go will certainly improve their survival potential.”
How is releasing three inexperienced hunters together supposed to do that, exactly? (I can see why they did it – they don’t want to risk the eaglets starving to death on camera – but still, it seems like a hasty decision. Couldn’t they have considered supplemental feeding, or something?)
Hey thanks Al – I wanted to see that.
“The trunk watches impassively” – bwahahaha!
windy – from what I read at the site – the parents don’t teach the young how to hunt anyway; they learn from watching other eagles and trial and error. And the wildlife people didn’t want the eaglets to get a lot bigger and then have to pull them.
Yes – they can still learn to hunt, but now they will need to be reintroduced after a period of captivity, which is usually trickier. On the other hand, eagles not much older than these have been reintroduced to the wild in “hacking towers” where people simply provide food for them and let them learn foraging on their own.
I watched Julian (the arborist who climbed up and got the eaglets for the banding) climb back up there to take them down again. It was late at night here, so I had to go to bed, and was thus spared of watching Papa return to a suddenly empty nest. It was bad enough reading Ophelia’s account of it.
As I understood it from the Cam site, the eaglets will be in a very large aviary with other eagles in rehabilitation around (they’ll be able to see but won’t have direct contact for the time being). They should be able to learn to hunt by watching the other eagles in the aviary. And Wildlife Center of Virginia has an excellent track record–the eaglets are in good hands.
Ophelia,
Very sad news. I used to live in the country here in SE Australia and we would often see wedge tail eagles flying overhead, on the look out for a meal–which included our free range chickens. It’s quite a different experience from seeing them on web cam.
Sigh.
I did an excellent job of getting myself upset yesterday evening by mentally ventriloquizing the male eagle “saying”
“But I brought you a fish – look – it’s a fish – I brought it for you – it’s right here – where are you”
God it’s maudlin. It still upsets me.
But look. The good news is, most animals live in the present. They don’t have the part of the brain that is good at thinking about that which is not immediately present. Eagles don’t have much brain at all; they have huge eye equipment instead. They’re moving on.
The eaglets are doing well. They’re eating lots including doing some tearing on their own (they were given an uncut portion of fish last night along with the cut pieces, and it was all gone by morning). The staff have built them a nest outside in an enclosure and they’ll be moved to it tomorrow.
http://www.wildlifecenter.org/wp/nbg-thursday-april28/