ALBION -- A bald eagle hurt in a fight for territory this spring is once again flying high over western Erie County.
The eagle, now healed, was released in Conneaut Township, near where he was found, on Friday.
In a small, sunny pasture off Route 215, the eagle hopped out of a dog crate, took off, landed briefly, and then gracefully took flight toward a distant tree line, where it circled for a moment and was out of sight.
"Beautiful," said Kris Steiner, taking a long breath, then beaming. Steiner helped nurse the bird back to health at Tamarack Wildlife Rehabilitation and Education Center in Saegertown. She brought him home to west Erie County on Friday in the back of her sport utility vehicle.
"He's fine. He should return to his life just as it was before he was injured," Steiner said.
The eagle was injured in late April in combat with another male eagle. A passer-by spotted the two birds rolling on the ground and slashing at each other and called the Pennsylvania Game Commission.
The birds were still fighting when a wildlife officer arrived and threw a blanket on the battle. One bird came out from under the blanket and flew away. The other -- battered, bruised and minus feathers -- was taken to Tamarack for care.
The center's eagle team, each member experienced in eagle care, responded. They found no fractures, but the bird's front talon, needed to hunt, had been torn nearly off.
Bandaged, the eagle was kept quiet in a cage, and in time was released into a larger space to hop and stretch and finally was turned loose in a long building to fly. Five weeks later, it was healed and ready for release.
Steiner's 14-year-old daughter, Rylie, and Game Commission Wildlife Conservation Officer Darin Clark accompanied Steiner on Friday as she brought the eagle home. All three expected the eagle to roost in a tree for a time to get its bearings. Instead, it flew off.
"Even better," Steiner said. "He knows exactly where he is."
The eagle probably won't fight for territory again until spring, when male eagles' hormones begin to boil, Steiner said.
Four more eagles, including another male involved in a similar territorial fight near the Union City Dam, were admitted to Tamarack for care this summer. Steiner said that Tamarack is in need of venison to help feed those birds.
"It's a sign of how many eagles we have here now," Steiner said, "enough that they're battling for space."
Adult eagles generally claim about a three-mile radius from their nests. But sometimes "rogue" eagles, young males that have not yet mated and established their own nests, try to claim another's, Steiner said.
"That's most likely what happened here," she said.
Steiner can't say if the eagle returned to Conneaut Township is the nest owner or the rogue.
"Whichever he is, we'll just have to let nature take its course," she said.
Pennsylvania's eagle population has increased almost every year since 1983, when the Game Commission began importing young eaglets from Canada in a seven-year restoration program. There were only three eagle nests in the state at that time, all three in Crawford County.
Now, the state is home to 203 known bald eagle nests, including eight in Erie County and 19 in Crawford County -- the most in the state. Game Commission Executive Director Carl Roe called the rebound "remarkable."
"Today, more Pennsylvanians have a greater opportunity of seeing a bald eagle in the wild since before the Civil War," he said.
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