A Wellington veterinarian found the bird on State Road 80 in April with a broken pelvis and a swollen wing. Weeks of rehabilitation helped him recover.
Injured eagle found in South Florida – flies again and returns to the wild
A veterinarian found the eagle on the side of the road near the Loxahatchee sugar fields. Months later, it flew away again.
In April, a Wellington veterinarian found an injured bald eagle on State Road 80 in the middle of the sugar cane fields near Loxahatchee. It had been hit and could no longer fly.
Now, 111 days later, he is free. Thanks to extensive treatment and physical therapy, the eagle was able to recover and return to the wild.
“There was no way I could get past it,” said Dr. Carol Holland, who found the bird on April 4. She was on her way to a horse show in Sarasota when she saw it stranded.
“They never just sit on the side of the road and I knew it had to be injured,” she said. “It was right on the side of the road – it wasn’t even in the grass.”
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Pelvic fracture and swollen wing force bald eagle to land in Palm Beach County
Doctors were initially unsure what had happened to the eagle, but based on its injuries, they assumed it had flown into something or been hit by a car.
Carolina Montano of the South Florida Wildlife Center said when the bird arrived at her facility in Fort Lauderdale, it not only had a broken pelvis but also a swollen left wing.
Tammy Rubio, a founder of the nonprofit bird rescue organization Misfit Island in Loxahatchee, and Holland were able to wrap the bird in several blankets that Holland had on hand (originally for her Chihuahuas, which she had in the car).
“I wanted to take as many blankets as I could and wrap them up because I’ve done this before with other birds: I’ve caught owls and other things, put them in my car and taken them somewhere.”
“But the thing was just huge.”
This eagle weighed nearly 8 pounds. The wildlife center where it was treated had not recorded its length, but Holland previously said the eagle was the size of a medium-sized dog.
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Saving eagles can be incredibly difficult. Even if they are shot down, the birds can still fully use their beaks and talons, says Katie Gill Warner, who directs the Audubon Center for Birds of Prey in Maitland.
“Eagle talons have a force and gripping power of 300 pounds (per square inch), so handling eagles requires training,” Warner wrote in an email. “Sometimes they can run away, making them difficult to capture safely. To make matters worse, they can swim.”
The rescue was particularly challenging for Holland because she had never dealt with an eagle before. However, she and Rubio couldn’t just take him anywhere to rescue him. Not only was he large, but he was also a protected species, and few centers are licensed to rehabilitate such animals.
The South Florida Wildlife Center is one of them. They immediately began treatments such as blood work and x-rays, handling the bird gently the entire time.
“When he started to get a little better, become more stable, gain weight and seem a little more active, we moved him to the final phase of rehabilitation, into our flight cage,” Montano said.
The flight cage is part of a process called flight conditioning.
“When they’re injured, you move them to a smaller cage and then to a larger cage,” Rubio said. “Then they can start moving around without hurting themselves.”
The larger cage provided the eagle with plenty of room to move around and perches on which to rest as his condition improved and his flights became longer.
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After nearly four months, the eagle was ready to go. Montano said they released him near where Holland and Rubio originally found him in Loxahatchee.
“This is their claimed territory,” Montano said, adding, “He could go off, get used to the area again and then go wherever his heart takes him.”
He is one of an unknown number of annual eagle rescues in Florida. Warner said there is no central tracking system for eagle rescues.
However, she added that Audubon treats up to 100 bald eagles each year.
According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, Florida has one of the highest concentrations of nesting eagles in the lower 48 states, with most of the birds found in northern and central Florida.
The Audubon Center website states that bald eagles were nearly driven to extinction by hunting in the 19th century and by the insecticide DDT in the 1950s.
It was removed from the endangered species list in 2007, but is still protected under the federal Bald Eagle and Golden Eagle Protection Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
Rubio and Holland were unable to attend the July 24 release. The center eventually changed some of the originally scheduled dates.
Holland said how glad she was that it happened and that she would have done everything she could to ensure the rescue.
“If I had to lay out two more blankets and catch it myself … that was my second or third option,” she said, glad Rubio was able to help her rescue it instead. “I was going to wrap it up and put it in the car with my Chihuahuas and either carry it to Sarasota or whatever I needed to do to get it to the right place.”
“I know how valuable they are, what wonderful birds they are.”
