The bald eagle was a child star when she captivated viewers of Santa Catalina Island's webcam last year, hatching on camera and even acquiring her own Facebook page.
Then she disappeared. Now she has re-emerged in the spotlight – this time that of a TV station in Washington state, 1,000 miles to the north.
And like other young stars, she ended up in rehab.
Eaglet K04 turned up in Washington state with a broken wing. The wing is being mended at the Sarvey Wildlife Care Center in Arlington, but the young eagle might have to remain in captivity; once healed, the wing still could be too fragile for life in the wild.
"They still don't know if she'll be able to fly again," said Carole Wood, a fan of the webcams and a donor to the island's eagle program. "If she can't, we know she'll be an education eagle. At least we know she's getting the best care she can get."
The Care Center received a torrent of email from well wishers, according to King 5, the Washington television station that picked up the story and made her famous again.
And more potential TV stars are on the way. One egg is in a webcam nest at Two Harbors on the island, where K04 hatched; three are incubating at West End. View live webcams.
The Two Harbors egg is expected to hatch between Mar. 25 and 28th; the other three, between Mar. 30 and April 7, said Peter Sharpe, a wildlife biologist and project director at the Institute for Wildlife Studies.
The cameras are maintained by the institute, which has been helping bald eagles hatch on the island for two decades.
For many years, the eagles laid eggs with shells too thin to allow the chicks to survive because of DDT dumped off the Palos Verdes Peninsula that worked its way into the food chain.
But in recent years, the eggs have been viable on their own; the institute now mostly monitors the birds.
"We stopped having to take eggs after 2008," Sharpe said. "So we don't have to help them out anymore."
http://www.iws.org/bald_eagles/nestchat.html
