“You’ve gotta help me,” said my rehabber friend Lisa Acton. “There’s a guy in Ossining and he swears he has two baby eagles in his back yard. I told him they’re probably not eagles, but he says they’re definitely eagles. He said they were so hungry they ate ham and fruit off a plate.”
“They what?” I said, alarmed.
“He said they were screaming for food and following him around the yard, so he gave them ham and fruit on a plate.”
“Oh, great,” I said. “But what about Erin? She’s right there in Ossining.”
Erin Baker is another rehabber, as well as the Environmental Educator at Teatown Lake Reservation. As it turns out, summer camp was going full force, so no one could leave and pick up the ham and fruit-eating baby eagles. No other wildlife rehabilitators could respond to the call, and Lisa was two hours away. She gave me the cell phone number of Paul, the owner of the yard.
“Can you put them in a box?” I asked him. “I don’t want to get all the way down there and find out they’ve disappeared.”
“They been here two days,” said Paul, who was from Ecuador. “And I don’ want to touch them, you know? Because they have big nails on their feets, and they gonna mess me up.”
Ten minutes from Paul’s house the downpour began. Paul led me across the yard to the edge of the woods and pointed to the baby eagle, pictured at left. I guess in the heat of the moment, everything looks like a baby eagle; but it was actually an almost-fledgling Cooper’s Hawk. Bald Eagles weigh 8 to 10 pounds, Cooper’s Hawks weigh 8 to 14 ounces. At least it was a raptor – a caller once hysterically demanded I come to her house and remove the eagle menacing her, and it turned out to be a brown racing pigeon who had simply lost his way and was walking around her driveway.
The rain eventually stopped, but we couldn’t find the other one. I delivered the bedraggled, skinny little fledgling to Erin, who is feeding her up and – we hope – temporarily giving the parents one less hungry mouth to feed.
We never get the full story. Did something happen to one of the parents? To both of them?
Will Paul eventually call and ask us to come pick up the other eagle?
Stay tuned.
I went to a vet to pick up a baby hawk awhile back….turned out to be a fledgling mocking bird. The vet tech said he was wrong, but the guy insisted it was a hawk.
And here I thought it was only New Mexico baby Eagles that morphed into Coops and chickens. Yesterday I was called out to convince a family that we did not need to move a nest. Trust me, those Barn Swallow parents are not actually going to injure your daughter when they swoop past.
the baby ‘eagle’ is eating like a little piggy and doing well thus far… reminds me of the time I went to pick up a baby owl, no hawk, no heron… and it was a pigeon. or the time it was a red-tailed hawk and with large pet taxi in hand, I walked over to see a little merlin running around the warehouse floor… or the time the red-tailed hawk turned out to be an osprey… now that was neat. you just never know what you’re really going to find until you get there!
….my favorite eagles are Crows. In the Bronx, a crow is always misidentified as an Eagle.
How rare is it that any of us get a call about an Eagle that is an EAGLE????
Ha ha, I’ve never had an eagle call that turned out to be an eagle.
A redtail who turned out to be an osprey would be cool!
I was close to a baby hawk/mockingbird once – a “peregrine falcon” who turned out to be a fledgling robin.
Crows think they’re eagles, don’t they?
Gotta watch those swallows, Mikal, they’ll kill you 🙂
I’ve had one hawk call that turned out to be the biggest juvy female bald eagle documented in the state of Georgia. I routinely get “eagle” calls that turn out to be ospreys. And my all-time favorite was the caller who swore he had a “baby” bald eagle. It was late in the year for BEs, but ya never know. I asked all the right questions: hooked beak? Check. Long talons? Check. Color? Brownish…Then he says he can hold it in the palm of his hand. “Text me a photo,” sez I. Moments later, I get the photo, start laughing, and hand my phone to my niece, who bursts into laughter herself, exclaiming, “It’s a MOURNING DOVE!!”
LOL – The Mourning Dove Has Landed!