NESTING BALD EAGLES

On March 27 of last year we were feeding in the large aviary when the Bald Eagles started acting strangely. The large female was defending an area underneath some scaffolding (courtesy of Spar Aviation) that was used as a feeding area. Eva announced that she thought they were making a nest. It didn't seem likely.

The male has been here since 1988. Christened "Thor", he had been accidentally shot as a first year bird and was missing the equivalent of his hand, on the right side. Now in his 21st year, he has been a fixture here.

The female came here two seasons ago, with a wing injury and missing flight feathers. The feathers had come back but she hadn't shown any interest in flying. That was until we installed a 50 foot pond system with help from Henry at Nature's Corner Store in Edmonton and Jeff of Blue Planet Water Features. She was really happy about the water and started making short flights which grew to 75-80 feet. It was great.

There doesn't seem to be a record of a Bald Eagle nesting on the ground in Alberta, even a captive one. There are other records. In the north, above the tree line, nests are recorded although they are rare. Oddly, a study of 206 Bald eagle nests in Florida reported 3 ground nests! I had never heard of it.

The next day, the 28th of March there was an egg. In the 25 years we have been rehabilitating raptors, only once has any resident bird nested here and that was an imprinted Red-tail hawk. Her egg failed to hatch. We had high hopes for the Eagle nest, so we set up a game camera to get some pictures and waited.

The potential date of hatch was calculated at April 25, or 26. Over the next 4 weeks we had two major snow storms, the last one over 3 days with overnight temperatures dipping to -13 C. (9 F) The Eagles took turns at the nest faithfully through all of this, tending the egg to term until the 25 of April when it was no longer seen. As the snow melted, it was found, broken and eaten by magpies. It was not fertile.

Here are some of the pictures that were taken over the 32 days. If you have any questions or comments our email is asibp@tic.ab.ca.