On Monday, a sleeping baby bald eagle nestled on one of its parents’ feet was accidentally knocked out of the nest on the Channel Islands in California. Research ecologist, Peter Sharpe came to its rescue.
According to the Catalina Islander, a three-person team from the Institute for Wildlife Studies (IWS) returned the three-week-old eaglet to its nest high above the Pacific Ocean. The eaglet had fallen between 10 and 15 feet and landed in a gully; its dramatic fall was caught on video from surveillance cameras around the entire area.
Sharpe and his team used ropes to reach the three-week-old chick; gave it a quick physical examination to make sure it had not been injured from the fall and returned the baby to its nest.
Sharpe oversees the bald eagle restoration project and with the help from the Institute for Wildlife Studies, every eaglet plays an important role in the conservation of the species. The researchers want to help maximize the number of babies reaching adulthood. Once the chicks are older, Sharpe will return and put identifying bands on the legs of the eaglets. Their measurements and estimates of their sex will be recorded.
In 1963, there were only 417 bald eagles living in the lower 48 states.
The latest USFWS Bald Eagle Population Update report estimates 316,708 eagles across the contiguous United States, which is more than quadruple the eagle population reported in the 2009 report. The rising number of Bald Eagles undoubtedly reflects the continuing conservation success story that stretches back to the banning of DDT in 1972.
AllAboutBirds.org
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