In Valley Park, Missouri, a bald eagle named Murphy who lives at the World Bird Sanctuary has become a foster dad.
According to the sanctuary’s executive director, Roger Holloway, spring time is the time of year when eagles breed as their natural reproductive behavior. And it seems as if a few weeks ago, the spring blooms and those mysterious eagle hormones attracted 31-year-old Murphy to a rock which he had been incubating; not an uncommon behavior.
It’s not out of the complete ordinary for an eagle if they don’t have an egg and they’re going through nesting behavior to try and incubate something.
Facebook
It just so happened however, that rescuers were able to replace the rock Murphy had been protecting was replaced with a real eaglet.
A few weeks ago a real baby eaglet had been blown out of its nest in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Only this baby survived and had become known as “Eaglet 23-126.” And shortly after removing Murphy’s pet rock and the baby moved to that spot, Murphy started to take an interest in the eaglet.
So here’s the timeline:
Murphy/RockBaby/Eaglet
March 8 – Murphy begins incubating his rock / MurphyMania begins
April 2 – Orphaned Eaglet 23-126 arrives (1-2 weeks old) after nest is blown down in a storm
April 4 – Murphy is moved out of the shared eagle enclosure with RockBaby due to protecting his RockBaby too aggressively
April 6 – Eaglet is moved to the Baby Jail and into Murphy’s enclosure to begin the bonding process. RockBaby is removed.
April 13 – Eaglet is removed from Baby Jail and MURPHY FEEDS THE BABY
April 16 – Tornado lands close to The Sanctuary – all birds survive, eaglet is taken back to the hospital for care
April 17 – eaglet returned to Murphy after the nest is fortified and improved. Bonding resumes!
And now Murphy is teaching Eaglet 23-126 how to be an eagle. In case you’re wondering, in the wild, eagles generally mate for life, and both parents help with the incubation although the mom does most of the work.
Foster dad Murphy’s story has gone viral, and his parenting skills have attracted thousands of likes on Twitter.
You can support this sweet pair and their 200 bird friends:
www.worldbirdsanctuary.org
You can also purchase an item:
https://www.amazon.com/baby-reg/KIISQBPTHNSN.
Check out the video:
https://www.facebook.com/WorldBirdSanctuary/videos/223027407082410
Follow the National Pet Rescue on Facebook for the latest animal related news.
IF ONLY PEOPLE WERE SMART ENOUGH TO LEARN FROM ANIMALS WHAT LOVE REALLY IS! THIS WOULD BE A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT WORLD!