Starving female chick found, recovering after nest goes down near Cuyahoga

[Donna]

A pair of bald eagles may have built a nest this year along the Cuyahoga River near a Cleveland steel mill.
No one found the nest and it may have come down in early June during heavy storms, said Damon Greer of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources' Division of Wildlife.
The best evidence: a young bald eagle chick that was found alone on the ground at the ArcelorMittal Cleveland complex in the industrial Flats area, he said.
The weeks-old eagle, starving and under attack by parasitic bugs, was taken to the Lake Erie Nature and Science Center in Bay Village and then transferred to the Medina Raptor Center in Chatham Township.
There the young female eagle was fed and regained strength, said director Laura Jordan. ''It was in bad shape when it got here,'' she said.
It appears that the uninjured bird was almost old enough to start flying but its pectoral muscles were not yet fully developed, she said.
The dark-headed young eagle is now at the Tennessee-based American Eagle Foundation facility where she is learning to hunt before being returned to the wild, she said.
Greer said that state wildlife officers in early May were on the Interstate 90 bridge in Cleveland checking on nesting peregrine falcons and saw adult bald eagles flying south with fish in early May.
That was a pretty good sign that a pair of birds had built a nest and were attempting to raise young, he said.
It appears likely that the nest was along the Cuyahoga River between Valley View and Cleveland, perhaps close
to the steel complex, he said. A number of large trees came down in thunderstorms in early June and ended up in the Cuyahoga River and it is possible that the eagle nest was in a tree that came down.
That would explain the young bird being found alone, no evidence of a nest and the adult birds abandoning the area, he said.
''Anything's possible today,'' Greer said. Years ago, eagles would try to avoid contact with humans, but that seems to be disappearing as competition grows for the best nesting spots and eagles are increasingly willing to share space with humans.
It is highly likely that the adult birds involved in raising the Cleveland youngster were a pair seen last spring north of Akron in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, he said.
The federal park already has one nesting pair of bald eagles. There is a nest in the Pinery Narrows area north of state Route 82 and west of the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland Metroparks' Brecksville Reservation.
The pair had two chicks this year, said Lisa Romaniuk of North Ridgeville, who monitors that nest and four others in Cuyahoga, Lorain and Erie counties.
The nest in the national park had failed in 2009.
Summit County also hatched its first bald eagles and may have a second nest.
The Nimisila nest — unsuccessful the last three years — had two chicks, said volunteer Tom Henry, who monitored the nest.
There is a report of a new nest off Cuyahoga Street on the border between Akron and Cuyahoga Falls, but wildlife officials do not know if any young came from it this year, said Andrea Tibbels of the Ohio Division of Wildlife.
The Wingfoot Lake nest in Portage County's Suffield Township was also successful for the first time, Henry said. That nest had also failed the last three years.
This year, the nest produced at least one chick. Once leaves came out, it was impossible to tell whether there were additional chicks, said Henry, who is retired from the Division of Wildlife.
Nests at Walborn Reservoir in Stark County's Marlboro Township and near Lake Milton in southeast Portage County were also successful, said volunteer James Kavelaris, 67, of Atwater Township.
The Walborn nest produced two chicks as did the Portage County nest, he said.
The Walborn nest is one of the most visible eagle nests in Northeast Ohio. It is 90 feet up in a white pine tree and the Stark County Park District has built a small viewing platform at 13606 Marlboro Avenue NE. Hours are 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Visitors cannot get closer than the deck. You will still need binoculars or spotting scopes to watch the birds that will be about 400 yards away.
A Medina County nest, in its second year, produced at least one eaglet. It is near Chippewa Lake and produced two young in 2009.
A nest in Cleveland Metroparks' Rocky River Reservation near Cleveland Hopkins Airport raised one eaglet, Romaniuk reported.
A nest at Killbuck Marsh in southern Wayne County produced one eaglet, Tibbels said.
The Breakneck Creek nest in southern Portage County produced three eaglets; a new nest at the old Ravenna Arsenal east of Ravenna produced one; and no information was available on a nest at Lake Rockwell north of Kent.
In 2010, the state can confirm 180 nests with 207 eaglets, but those totals are much higher and the state cannot say for certain what the numbers are, she said. Thirty-three new nests were reported.
In 2009, Ohio had a record 215 nests, of which 113 were known to produce young. What happened at 55 nests was unknown. A minimum of 197 eaglets were hatched and fledged or left the nest on their own. There were 32 new nests.
Ohio had a record 222 eaglets in 2008.
In 1979, Ohio had just four nests on Lake Erie because of loss of habitat and pesticides. Four years ago, the eagle was removed from the federal endangered species list after its comeback.
Watching eagle nests is a time-consuming activity, said the 52-year-old Romaniuk, who has monitored nests for 10 years.
She spends one to three hours at each of her nests at least four times a week. ''You learn to know your birds and they're all different,'' she said.
Monitoring bald eagles is a labor of love for Kavelaris.
He spends up to 60 hours a year watching the eagles at his two nests, determining what's going on by watching their body language with a spotting scope.
''I've been doing it for 16 years and it's contagious,'' he said. ''Seeing an eagle in the wild is a pretty awesome thing to see. I got goose bumps after I saw my first one. It's a bird that's 36 to 40 inches from head to tail and with a wing span of 6 1/2 to 7 1/2 feet. It's majestic. When I see one, I hear that Johnny Denver song, Rocky Mountain High, and that's the way I feel. I almost get a lightheaded buzz. . . . It's fun but it's almost addicting.''