Recent weeks have seen a flurry of activity for some young bald eagles in Pennsylvania, providing some drama for the thousands who watch the birds on livestreaming video. In York County, a pre-flight eaglet that fell from its nest on camera finally found its way home, and in Allegheny County, two eaglets flew for the first time.
Rachel Handel, a spokeswoman for the Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania, said two eaglets that have matured off-camera in Harmar had fledged June 22. Volunteer eagle watchers, who gather daily across the Allegheny River near the Oakmont Bakery, spotted the birds in flight.
Audubon had been monitoring the nest via camera since 2015, but following a nest collapse last year the eagle parents relocated to a cliff-side tree just beyond the camera’s field of view.
“Audubon is fortunate to have eagle supporters who actively share their observations with us. It’s a bit like crowdsourcing information — the more people that provide information, the more accurate picture we have of what’s going on at the nest,” Ms. Handel said. “Because there was no camera on the nest this year, egg laying was determined based on the adult birds’ behaviors in the nest. ... It took some time to know that there were two eaglets — spotters had to wait until the eaglets were large enough to be seen over the sides of the nest, which are quite high.”
With permission of the state Game Commission, Audubon is expected to move the camera to a better vantage point sometime before the next nesting season.
Midway across Pennsylvania, thousands of online eagle watchers got a sense of closure in a multi-day tragic-comic drama at an eagle nest near Codorus State Park, York County.
On June 18, two nearly grown eaglets were caught on camera sitting shoulder to shoulder and squawking loudly for food. The mother eagle carrying in a live fish crash-landed onto the crowded nest. Like avian dominoes, she slammed into the nearest eaglet, pushing it to the edge, which bumped its sibling out of the nest and into the air. While the first eaglet clung to the sticks by a talon and climbed back in, the second bird plummeted out of sight. For minutes, the mom paced the nest, peering over the edge and looking confused.
Hours later a team of volunteers led by Karen Lippy, a York County birder and former Codorus park employee, found the lost eaglet quietly clinging to a branch far below the nest.
“A lot of people wanted us to rescue it and return it to its nest, but it’s a wild animal. It’s better to leave them alone,” she said. “With the landowner’s permission, we just wanted to go in to see if [the eaglet] was still alive.”
The accident occurred days before the young birds were expected to fledge. The fallen eaglet is believed to have hopped from branch to branch for days trying to make it back to the nest, its parents occasionally delivering food. By June 20, one of those long hops apparently turned into a glide and with a few wing flaps the young eagle was flying. The eaglet was seen flying, awkwardly at first, on Friday.
“On Saturday morning, it went all the way across [Lake Marburg], more than a mile, and fell into the water,” Ms. Lippy said. “The next morning, it was seen walking around in a farmer’s yard. It flew up on the farmer’s roof, flew to what we call the ‘play area’ and then made it back to the nest.”
The accidental fall may have forced the eaglet to a premature fledging, she said. As of Tuesday afternoon, its sibling, which had clung to the nest during the crash, had still not made its first flight.
The Game Commission, by charter the wildlife management agency responsible for birds, reports there are now more than 250 bald eagle nesting sites in Pennsylvania.
John Hayes: 412-263-1991, jhayes@post-gazette.com.
First Published: June 26, 2019, 6:17 p.m.