A More Exciting Birthday

Well another year has come and gone and I am celebrating another birthday today. I did not really do anything special today. My boss did take me out for lunch and Michelle bought me a treat but since the weather was mostly rainy and cloudy I came home and sat around the house after work.
My most exciting birthday happened four years ago on 8-12-2007, I apologize to any long time readers who have already heard this story. It was a Sunday and since it was my birthday Michelle let me pick how we would spend the day. I decided that we would go up to Crex Meadows, in Wisconsin, and do some wildlife photography.
While driving around Crex we spotted an eagle on the ground. It is unusual for an eagle to be on the ground, unless it is on some prey and we did not see any food, so we decided to watch the bird for a while. After about 15 to 20 minutes the eagle had still not taken off so we headed over to the visitors center to let them know about the injured eagle.
Unfortunately the volunteer that was on duty was not able to help us so we decided to take matters into our own hands. We went to a store and purchased some supplies and then headed back to rustle up the eagle. The eagle did not want to go with out a fight, so when I tried to grab him he ran from me straight into a large mud puddle.
It took a while but eventually I was able to get him out of the mud and into a small crate. The mud actually wore him down a bit making it easier to handle him. So we took off from Crex with a muddy eagle in a crate on the back seat. We tried to get a hold of some Wisconsin rehaber but we could not reach any so we decided, with the blessing of someone at the Wisconsin DNR, to take him back down to The Raptor Center. At TRC they fixed up a bone in his wing, which was broken, and the next February I was able to release him back into the wild. Although most of these pictures are not quite up to my normal standard, I obviously did not take most of them, this is one of the fondest memories that I have, and that fact that it happened on my birthday made it so much more special. Eventually the weather will clear up this weekend and then perhaps I can go out and find another special memory like this one. If you would like more details on the story check out these links http://ecobirder.blogspot.com/2007/08/rollercoaster-birthday.html http://ecobirder.blogspot.com/2007/08/eagle-rescue-update.html http://ecobirder.blogspot.com/2008/03/eagle-is-set-free.html.

Winter Birding Part 3: Harley's Release

A couple of years ago, back in 2008, my February was highlighted by the honor of releasing an eagle that I had saved six months earlier, if you would like more info on that story check out these posts from 2008. This January I had the pleasure of attending another important release.

The release was held at the Carpenter Nature Center. This location was chosen because it over looks the St Croix River just north of where it meets the Mississippi. Because of the joining of the two rivers the water typically stays open here which makes it good eagle habitat during the winter.

Many eagles are released at Carpenter during the winter but this release was special. This was the time for Harley to return to the wild. Harley had become a local celebrity because of the details of his rescue.

Harley was injured and dying on the side of the road in northwest Wisconsin when Brian Baladez, a local biker, rode by on his bike. He realized that there was something wrong with him so he stopped grabbed the mature eagle, something you should not do unless you have experience, wrapped it in his leather jacket and strapped it on to his bike. He took the eagle to the Duluth Zoo, with the help of friendly police officers who were very surprised to find a biker with an eagle strapped to his bike, and it eventually was transported to The Raptor Center.

When he was admitted to TRC it was determined that he had a fractured Ulna, a bone in the wing, and was suffering from lead poisoning. Because of the unusual circumstances surrounding his rescue some newspapers in Duluth picked up on the story and thus Harley got his celebrity status and his name. Brian, pictured above, got the honor of releasing Harley back out into the wild. He was fitted with a transmitter so that his moves could be tracked. If you would like to follow Harley out in the wild check out the new TRC blog. I was asked to come out and photograph the happy occasion and several of the pics, including the one above, made it into publication.

An Eagle is Set Free

Last Thursday, February 28th, was a very special day. That was the day that I got to release the immature eagle, that Michelle and I rescued from Crex Meadows back in August, back into the wild. Michelle got off of work early that day and picked me up at work around 2:30 PM and then we headed over to The Raptor Center to pick up Terry Headley, who was our eagle handler and eagle 07-393. Birds at the clinic portion of The Raptor Center are given a designation when the arrive. The first number is the year in which the bird is brought into The Raptor Center and the second number is the chronological patient number for that year. So our eagle was the 393rd bird that checked into The Raptor Center in 2007.
Here is a shot that we took at The Raptor Center before we left. It is very fitting that Terry was our handler because she was volunteering in the clinic when we brought the eagle in. She remember him because of all of the mud he was covered in. She remembered that they had to wash him and blow dry his feathers before they could even do the exam.
You can see that he has a small cut near his eye. He got this while in the flight pens. When the birds are almost ready to be released they spend a lot of time working with the flight crews exercising and having their flight evaluated. When they are not working with the flight crews they are placed in the flight pens. These pens allow the birds some room so that they can fly between perches. There were several other eagles with 393 in the pen and another waiting. Since they were so crowded and he was getting rambunctious The Raptor Center was in a hurry to get him released.
The plan was to release him down in Colville Park in Red Wing, MN. This area has a lot of open water and a good food supply which would increase his chances of making it through the rest of the winter. It is about an hour and a half trip to Red Wing and it was an extremely interesting drive with a very vocal eagle in the seat next to me. The weather did not help as it had begun to lightly snow as we were making our way down. When we arrived there were several eagles around, including this immature which was on a deer carcass that the DNR had dropped for the eagles.
While Terry got out of the car with the eagle I was getting the photo stuff ready. Since I was going to be handling the release Michelle took most of the pictures that follow.
The most important part of the release is to make sure that you have a firm hold of the talons. These are the business end of the eagle and the most dangerous.

I remember how strong the talons were from when I rescued the bird. During the rescue I had to pry them from the cage door.
Changing from terry supporting the eagle to me was a bit tricky but once I had a hold it was fine.
Look at that look. "Hey aren't you the guy who dragged me out of the mud."
Here we are ready to go.
On the way down Terry had told us about other releases that she had done at Colville Park where the eagle had landed in the water and needed to be rescued again. So we stood a short way back from the river and on the count of three gave it a little toss.

A couple of people who read the blog braved the weather to come down and watch, John Mikes from weekend shooter, who took a pic of an immature eagle being attacked that we believe might have been why this bird was injured, and CAS. I would like to thank them both for coming down and thank John who took the picture below and has been gracious enough to let us use it.
The eagle did fly low over the water, which made my heart stop for a couple of seconds, but then he soared up and landed in a tree by the marina.
He sat there for a little bit so I grabbed the camera and headed down to get a couple of shots.
After checking things out for a bit he took of again and headed to where the other eagles were on the other side of the water.
The weather was getting worse and we needed to get Terry Back to The Raptor Center so we did not have a lot of time to celebrate. Holding the eagle was extremely cool but there is nothing like the feeling that I had when the eagle left my hands, opened its wing and reclaimed its freedom. It is a memory that I will always cherish and one that is even more special because with out Michelle and my intervention, as well as all the people who helped at Crex Meadows and the great staff and volunteers at The Raptor Center, I know that this eagle would probably not be alive.

Big News

I just received a call from Kelly Scott, my shift lead at the raptor center, and it appears that the eagle that I rescued last August, on my birthday, is ready to be released. For those of you who may not have been reading the bog then, my wife and I found an injured immature bald eagle while out birding at Crex Meadows, in Wisconsin. It was a Sunday and there was no one around to help, so we went to the nearest town and picked up a pet cage and a pair of garden gloves and we rescued the eagle and transported him down to The Raptor Center. It was quite an ordeal. I found out later, when I joined The Raptor Center transport crew, that they have a special crew to rescue eagles because of their size and the difficulty. If you would like to read the whole story and see the pics my wife took of the rescue here is the link.

Since we were already on the list to release a bird, due to some of our large donations in the past, I asked if we could release the eagle that we rescued if it recovered. Well it appears that the release day will be later this week. They want to release the bird down in Redwing, MN either Thursday or Friday late afternoon. Michelle is going to try and get time off so that she can be there and maybe snap some pics. If you live in the Twin Cities area and would like to come watch let me know and I will give you details once I find out more info.

Eagle rescue update.

The other day I recieved a message from the raptor center about the immature bald eagle that my wife and I rescued at Crex Meadows on August 12th. According to the message the bird is doing well. He had a fractured humorous, which is not very funny. They operated on the 14th and everything went well. The eagle is now recuperating.

I intend to contact the raptor center again to see if I can get more details on their prognosis of whether or not he will be able to released back into the wild. If so, I am going to see if there is any chance that I can be the one to release him. I am currently on their list to release a bird and have been called about 5 times already this year. Unfortunately the timing or location have not worked out, but this bird is special to me and I would do whatever is necessary if I get the opportunity to release it.

I also received an e-mail earlier today from John Mikes who runs the blog Weekend Shooter. John also does a lot of shooting out at Crex Meadows and happened to be out there shooting the day before we rescued the eagle. He sent me this photo that he shot on the 11th.

This likely is the immature that we rescued on the 12th being attacked by an adult of the 11th. This was probably the cause of his injury. Thanks John, it is nice to find out what happened before we got there. If you like great birding photography I recommend John's site http://weekendshoot.blogspot.com/.

Rollercoaster birthday

This year has sure had its ups and downs for me. Early in the year I got the great pleasure of photographing a great horned owl nest with a chick for a couple of weeks only to see the chick die after it fell from the nest. I started this blog in April which has been very good for me but then in May got diagnosed with diabetes and started having to take insulin shots and watch my diet. On August 12th I turned 44 and this birthday had it's ups and downs just like most of the year has.

As part of my birthday celebration my wife indulged my desire to go on a birding trip up to Crex Meadows. We had taken some great trips to Crex in the early summer but our last trip in July had not been very fruitful. My hope was that some of the shorebirds might be migrating through and we would have a good trip. Unfortunately there were very little shorebirds to be found. The birding was not a complete loss though, we did manage to see trumpeter swans with cygnets, belted kingfisher, sandhill cranes, pied grebe, mergangser, egret, heron, goldfinch, northern harrier, eastern kingbird and others. This would have been a fun but pretty forgettable trip except for 2 incidents.

First the bad. During the trip my Canon 20d locked up and gave me an error 99. This is a generic error that I have received a few times before. I have found that taking the battery out and then putting it back in seems to reset the system and clear the error. This time though it did not work. When I placed the battery back in the shutter started going off continuously until I removed the battery again. I have since got the shutter to quit going off when I put in a battery but as soon as I turn the camera on I get the error 99 again. So for now I am using my wife's canon XTI until I can decide what I want to do about the problem.

Now the really good. While we were out shooting I spotted a large shape on the ground in the area that is the dried out Phantom Lake. We took a closer look with the bino and saw that it was an immature bald eagle. We took a couple pictures and watched it for a while and both Michelle and I began to get the feeling that something was wrong.

I have observed many eagles in my birding adventures but I have rarely see one sit on the ground for an extended period of time unless it was on a carcass of some sort. It did not look like it was eating anything but I decided to get out of the car to get a little higher view and see if I could see any kill on the ground.

Getting out of the car spooked the bird but instead of flying away it ran a few steps with one wing up and the other one down. At this point we figured that he had an injured wing so we went to the Crex visitor center to report our observation. Unfortunately the volunteers who man the visitors center on Sundays are typically retirees who do not have much experience dealing with wildlife and this Sunday was no exception. Next we tried to call the Raptor Center which is down in the Twin Cities. We reached their automated system which gave us an emergency number. We called that and got another automated system which gave basic directions on what to do if you found an injured raptor and then referred you to the website.

At this point we figured that we were on our own. It had been about 30 minutes so we went back into the park to check on the bird and found that he was still on the ground in the same spot. We then left the park and drove 20 miles to the nearest town. There we found a Walmart and purchased the largest animal carrier that they had, a pair of leather garden gloves and a sheet, since it was an emergency I forwent my boycott of Walmart for their bad business and environmental practices.

We returned to the park, over an hour had passed, and the eagle was still in the same spot. I headed out with the cage, gloves and sheet. I had Michelle stay at the road since the footing was not that great, being a dried up lake bed, and she took some pictures.

As I approached the eagle tried to run, but he tripped over his bad wing and ended up on his back. With his bad wing he could not turn himself back over. So I threw the sheet over him so that he would calm down.I then worked to gather him up so that I could place him in the cage. Unfortunately his wing was still out and while I was trying to get it folded back in his head came uncovered. He immediately panicked and used me to get himself flipped back over. I backed off not wanting to get impaled by his talons, I don't think leather garden gloves where meant to stop an eagles talon.He scurried away right to a depression in the ground that still contained water and mud.He tripped again and ended up on his back in the mud. This was a huge problem. I tried to cover him up with the sheet again to calm him down but as the sheet began to cover him he clawed at it with his talons and pushed himself further into the mud. His head went under the mud for a second and I was worried that he might drown. I tried to get down to him so that I could pull him out but I was sinking up to the top of my thighs before I could reach him. I backed off to let us both regain our composure. There was no way that I could get out to the bird without going into the deep mud and taking a chance of loosing my footing.

So I found a stick on the ground, slid it under the bird and used it to pull him out of the mud. He tried to push himself away from me and further into the mud but I would not let him go. I told him right there that I would not let him die. I moved the cage as close to the water/mud as I could to the left of the bird and then pivoted his head into the cage. I then covered his head up with the sheet to calm him down. I then folded in his good wing and had to lift the cage out of the mud to fold in his bad wing which was underneath him. Unfortunately he was half way in when he grabbed the cage door with his talon and would not go in any further. I put the stick that I used to get him out of the mud behind his talon to keep him from backing out and worked on getting his talons free from the door. When I freed one talon he let go of the door and clasped the stick instead. I then turned the stick and put it, along with the rest of the bird, inside the cage. The stick was too big to fit into the cage with the door shut so I left the door open with the stick protruding.

By this time Michelle came down because she was worried because she could not see what was happening. I was not happy with how the bird was sitting in the cage but I wanted to get it away from the mud before I tried to fix the situation. As I was carrying the cage to the road David and Debbie Oxendale pulled up in their SUV. David was a volunteer at Crex and had some experience helping with wild birds. He helped me to get the eagle straightened out on his back, we would have preferred to have him on his feet but we thought that turning him over might cause more damage.

Together with Dave and Debbie we took the eagle back to the visitors center. Dave then made some calls trying to find someone that was available to assist the bird. He talked with someone at the DNR and they suggested the Raptor Center. After a few times through the automated system he was able to get a hold of someone. Since we could not get a hold of anyone that could help out by Crex it was decided that we would take the bird to the Raptor Center. So we loaded the bird in the car, thanked David and Debbie for their help and drove back to the cities. We arrived at the Raptor Center just after 4pm. They took the eagle in and looked at him right away. It was obvious that he had a problem with his wing but he still had some fight in him when they took him from the cage, which they said was a good sign. They were very positive about his prospects to live which made all the work and stress of the rescue worth while.

The whole ordeal was pretty stressful and between the stress, exertion, and not eating until late my blood sugar dropped so low that I got dizzy and had to eat a piece of sugared candy. Despite all that I consider helping this bird live is the best birthday present that I have ever received.

I am currently waiting to hear from the raptor center on his progress and will update this post when I get word.

Update:

I just put up another post with an update on the bird and a photo taken by John Mikes at Weekend Shooter that might explain what happened in the first place. You can find the new post here http://ecobirder.blogspot.com/2007/08/eagle-rescue-update.html