Friends, family, ornithologists and bird lovers across the country – including those of us who didn’t know of him until this week – are mourning the passing of a golden eagle named Ithaca.
The eagle, who hatched at Cornell on May 13, 1972, was the second of three eagle chicks bred through artificial insemination by then Cornell graduate student Jim Grier. Grier and his wife, Joyce, raised Ithaca at home with their own children; and the bird of prey became a celebrity of sorts, appearing on Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show” in 1977 and a host of news features afterward. Grier, who joined the North Dakota State University faculty in 1973, frequently brought Ithaca to classes and presentations there.
Ithaca contracted West Nile virus in 2002, and he was euthanized Sept. 29, 2009, because of complications of that illness.
“It is sad that he encountered and suffered from the virus, that we lost him, and that he died so young (only 37 years old – he otherwise probably would have lived many more years and I expected that he would outlive me),” Grier writes on his Web site. “As a biologist, however, I’m familiar with life (and death) and understand that it’s all in the nature of biology.”
