Ailing eagle goes to Alaska Raptor Center in Sitka for rehab
- Daily Sitka Sentinel
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
By Andrea Burtzel
Daily Sitka Sentinel
A distressed bald eagle was taken to the Alaska Raptor Center for care on Valentine’s Day Saturday fter a good Samaritan spotted it hanging upside down in a tree then falling to the ground, on Jarvis Street.
“I think what happened was he was trying to get up into the tree, and he could grab it with his feet, but then he didn't have the energy to flip himself up,” said Jennifer Cedarleaf, avian director at the center. “So he ended up just letting go and landing on the ground.”
“We had to follow him for a bit,” she said. “You could tell he was clearly weak. He could still fly a little, but he was staying really low to the ground.”
In an unlikely twist, the eagle briefly landed on the very van belonging to the people who had called to report it.
“The people who called me pulled up and parked their van right behind my car,” Cedarleaf said. “It has a rack on the top of it, and the eagle flew up and landed right on the rack of the van.”
Cedarleaf said the eagle is a male and is now undergoing treatment at the Raptor Center.
“When we picked him up, he was perfectly fine, except for the fact that he was thin,” she said.
This time of year, staff members typically see several malnourished eagles since food sources are scarce until the herring arrive to spawn, Cedarleaf said.
For malnourished birds, treatment is generally straightforward. Staff reintroduce food gradually.
“You don't want to just give them food – the energy it takes to digest it could kill them,” she said. “Normally, we’ll start with tube feeding. In this case, because he wasn’t in terrible condition and his temperature was normal, we started him on what we call clean meat to make it as easy as possible for him.”
Cedarleaf said eagles have a specialized pouch called a crop, which allows them to store large amounts of food before gradually digesting it.
“It can look like they have a big tumor on their neck,” she said. “They slowly push it down into their stomach to digest it.”
If a bird has not eaten for an extended period, that system can fail.
“They can develop what’s called crop stasis,” Cedarleaf said. “The crop just can’t move the food down, and it sits there.”
To prevent that, treatment begins with small amounts of “clean meat" – red meat or fish without bones or skin, to avoid overwhelming the bird’s digestive system. If the crop stops functioning, she said, staff may have to manually remove the food.
Staff have nicknamed the eagle “Bananas.”
“He’s a little crazy,” Cedarleaf said with a laugh. “We name all of our rehab birds. We get so many eagles that it’s just easier to follow them with a name than an identification number.”
Cedarleaf said all birds are placed in quarantine upon arrival for at least 10 days due to concerns about Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza, commonly known as bird flu, to prevent it from spreading to other birds at the center.
Once Bananas clears quarantine, he will be moved into the main flight enclosure, a 150-foot, L-shaped flight tube.
“The birds have to turn a corner, and it’s big enough that they can practice flying and get back to health,” she said. “We only have one person go in there at a time to clean, and feed them, so they’re not seeing people all day.”
Birds remain in the enclosure until they're ready for release. That typically occurs in the spring when herring spawn and again in the fall when dying salmon inhabit local streams. Members of the public are invited to attend the releases.
This year’s spring release is expected in the second half of March, though a date has not yet been set.
“It’s kind of pointless to get a bird that’s starving back to a normal weight and then release them when there’s no food out there,” Cedarleaf said. “So we’ll keep them until we know there’s herring around, and then we’ll let everybody go. We’ve got a bunch of babies, I think we’ve probably got seven or eight eagles to release in the spring.”
Cedarleaf encouraged residents who find an injured or distressed bird to contact the Alaska Raptor Center directly at 907 747-8662 during business hours from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. After hours, an emergency line is available at 907 738-8662. People may also contact the Sitka Police Department at 907 747-3245 for assistance.
• This story originally appeared in the Daily Sitka Sentinel.
