Daddy instinct.

A bald eagle that went viral after nurturing a rock it thought was an egg has become an adoptive father to an eaglet at a Missouri bird sanctuary.

The 31-year-old bird, Murphy, is flightless due to a permanent wing injury. It was “very protective” of the rock, which it treated like an unhatched egg, and would squawk at other birds and charge at those that came too close.

I have no idea why The Telegraph refers to the male eagle as “it,” especially since his sex adds to the interest of the story. Eagles do share the chick-rearing duties.

While Murphy received nationwide press coverage and hoards of online fans for his seemingly natural, if misdirected, parenting abilities, an orphaned eaglet arrived at the sanctuary after falling from a tree during a storm.

When the sanctuary received Bald Eagle 23-126 on April 1, it was only one to two weeks old. It was the first eaglet to arrive at the sanctuary for eight years.

They probably don’t know the sex of the eaglet, so “it” for her or him makes sense. For Murphy, not so much. It’s not anthropomorphizing. Humans don’t have a monopoly on her/him.

The keepers weren’t going to hand the chick over to Murphy because he’d only ever played daddy to a rock, but they changed their minds because he got more and more protective of dear little Rock.

After a cautious introduction of the two birds using a small, heated cage called a “baby jail”, Bald Eagle 23-126 was brought into Murphy’s enclosure. 

The feathered foster father passed the test when it chopped up a whole fish that it was given by keepers so that its new ward could eat it safely.

Way to go Murphy!