An Eagle’s Second Chance
After a two month stay, a very big, strong and fat female Golden Eagle was released back to the wild. She arrived on August 4th as a young and very skinny eagle. She was found by a falconer who gave her some food then called Martin to care for her. After an initial examination, Martin thought she would just need to stay a little while to eat a lot and regain her strength before being released for her second chance to make it in the wild.
It turned out she needed a little more time, staying just over two months. On November 9th, Martin caught her from the large chamber she’d shared with the juvenile white belly bald eagle, and put her in a kennel to take her up to the C-Overlook for release.
Though we normally try to organize a public release, today we let the camera be the means to share this release with our growing online audience. Martin took the opportunity to answer a lot of common questions we’ve seen in emails and comments.
FAQs in this video:
9:00 – About the “hood”
9:30 – About weight and “keel” bone
11:38 – About the young eagle and her parents relationship
12:20 – Why it is so hard for Birds of Prey to survive
12:48 – About her rehabilitation process
13:55 – About her weight and second chance
14:30 – About where she will be released and why that place is chosen
15:30 – About how she will survive her first five years
16:20 – About her time of release and weather conditions
17:00 – Do we train them?
17:30 – About banding and birds returning
19:50 – Why we hold public releases
20:50 – Why don’t we just release the eagle out of the box?
23:30 – About the eagles feet
23:47 – Differences between Golden Eagle and Bald Eagle as juveniles and adults
25:20 – Effect of Martin holding the eagle
26:00 – Why doesn’t the eagle fight Martin?
27:30 – What the eagle may do just after release
