A Juvenile Eagle Fledges With a Little Help

by Rich Nicol, Eagle Project Volunteer

As any NJ Eagle Project nest monitor will tell you, we go through many emotions during the nesting season. The first time of the season that you spot the eagle pair on the nest is exhilarating because you know at least they are back. Then comes the “will they or won’t they nest stage”, where every time you go to the nest your heart drops if you don’t see the eagles. The feeling you get when they are sitting low in the nest and you know they have laid eggs is like your fist pumping the sky. However, there are times that seriously try you. There is nothing like the gut punch of seeing a nest tree that fell over after a storm or an abandoned nest sitting empty. We have to be even-keeled, but emotions boil over sometimes and the loss of a nest can really make you rethink why you are a nest monitor at all. The eagles you watch become family, and you feel great joy when the nestlings turn into fledglings and take to the skies, although you had no part in it, you feel pride nonetheless in their success. This brings us to this story of a rather precocious male nestling who defied all the odds.

I have watched this eagle pair since they started nesting in Ocean County, the female is banded with a green NJ band, D72. I consider her my spirit animal, she was the female from the first nest I spotted by myself and she is the reason I continue to monitor today. She originally was banded in 2013 at the Navesink River nest and since setting up shop at this nest in 2018, she has called this area home. She and her mate rarely leave their home range where there is plenty of food, and the fact that she doesn’t leave her territory makes her one of the few eagles I can find almost year-round. The pair have moved their nest several times since 2018, once when the nest was destroyed by a branch falling off. They tried to nest lower in the tree but she didn’t like that and decided to renest in a different tree a few hundred feet away, which, by luck, was in the backyard of a wonderful woman who I call my guard dog. She watches them like a hawk for me and if something happens she gives me a call.

On June 12th, I received a call from the homeowner, she told me one of the nestlings had fallen from the nest tree. I hurried over and as I was pulling up I noticed the two nestlings sitting up in the nest glaring at me, a fact I thought strange because she had said one was on the ground and I had only seen two chicks in the nest previously. I walked around the back of her house and there was, in fact, a nestling on the ground. I was taken aback because I do monitor the nest and had never seen more than two heads pop over the sticks. The young eagle was moving in and out of the tree line and scurrying along the ground, a quick look at him and I realized although he was a decent size, he was not capable of flight yet.

I put in a call to Ben Wurst of CWF and a half hour later he showed up as I was watching the bird move around in the woods. A quick plan was established and Ben swooped in and grabbed the tired and weak bird as I served as the distraction, waving and talking to the nestling so Ben could do his thing. The young eagle was extremely weak and malnourished, probably because his siblings were stealing all the food from him, and I also wouldn’t be surprised if they pushed him out so they didn’t have any competition at all. I took the eagle to Toms River Avian Care where Don Bonica, one of the nicest people you will ever meet, took him in and started him on a path to recovery. He had no serious injuries, he was just very weak from no food. On June 25th the young eagle was ready to be reunited with his family. A temporary nesting platform was built and installed. The eaglet was banded H54 and placed in the temporary nest with a few fish for a meal. H54 still could not fly and was still a few weeks away from the flight feathers growing all the way in, so the hope was that the parents would see him in the temporary nest and start to feed him.

H54 had other ideas though, he spent the night in the nest but decided the next day to stage a jailbreak and hopped out of the nest and back on the ground. I got another panicked call, thankfully I wasn’t at work, and ran there, only to find him running around in the woods again. I must admit, I was pretty exasperated by this guy. He just didn’t want to work with us. So again, a call to Ben Wurst, and while waiting for Ben, I decided to start looking for him. Have I mentioned the briars? or the thick woods? This guy decided to find the thickest place to hide in and I called reinforcements to help. Ben got there, along with Sandy and her husband Bob, and we finally found him, used triangulation to hem him in and finally, Ben (the man is a legend) grabbed the eagle once again. It was much harder to capture him this time because he had 10 days of food and water and wasn’t weak anymore. Ben placed him back in the nest with a stern warning to stay there. Which he promptly ignored because the next morning, I was at work and got the call he jumped out again. I was stuck at my job for two hours before I could get there. Pulling up to the nest I see Don from Toms River Avian Care, who the homeowner also called after realizing I would not be able to get there quickly. We searched for about 45 minutes in what I could only say was a blast furnace, temps were up around 95 with humidity so thick it hung in the trees. We circled around and came back to the house without any sign of him. We were both pretty hot and exhausted but I decided to make one more circle and Don, being the gentleman he is, said he would go also. We set off and after about 15 minutes I heard Don shout that he had found him. I ran toward his voice and saw him knee-deep in a briar patch with two hands holding the bird and blood running down his face. He had leaped after the bird and went flying into the briars to grab him. Don (did I mention he is 76?), you are amazing, my friend. So after a small trek through the woods back to the cars, Don gave the bird some nutrients to help him because he was quite stressed and a ride back to Toms River Avian Care to once again get him well. Don worked his magic and the bird grew in his flight feathers after a few weeks. It was decided that he needed some more flight space so he was taken to The Raptor Trust for a week or so of flight in a much larger flight cage. After practicing his flight and being given the ok to be released he was brought back to the nest site on August 1st. I stood watching him gain height and wing his way over to the trees about 200 feet away. We may never know if he will make it past his first year since first-year eagles have a high mortality rate. The hope is that he will rejoin his parents and siblings for a few weeks and learn how to hunt on his own.

As I write this, I wonder if what we saw was the beginning for H54, or perhaps the end, or maybe something in the middle. All I can say is we gave him a chance. He will never know about all of the people who helped him or even care for that matter, but I think everyone who was involved will tell you he touched them. I have dreams of someone seeing him in five years, white head shining, the H54 green band on his leg, starting his own nest and perhaps he will be someone else’s spark bird, a spirit animal to them and the whole process will start again.

All of this could not have happened without the kindness of everyone involved: Kathy Clark, Director of the NJ Endangered and Nongame Species Program; CWF’s Larissa Smith and her husband Matt Tribulski, who built and erected the temporary nest for junior; Ben Wurst from CWF, who helped me catch H54 not once but twice; Melissa Roach from the NJ Endangered and Nongame Species program, who got to Band her first eagle; Paul Lenzo for transport the first time; Barb McKee for transport to The Raptor Trust; The Raptor Trust for their flight cage; Don Bonica of Toms River Avian Care, who not only took care of H54 but helped track him down in some thick woods; Bob and Sandy Caggiano who waded into the Briars to help us grab him; and Lettie and Kathy, my guard dogs at the nest who started this whole adventure with a phone call. I would like to thank them all for their tireless dedication to all things wildlife, we need more people like these in the world…

Please note that all photos were taken with a high-powered camera and at a distance so as not to disturb any eagles