Pair of injured eagles prove to be lovebirdsUpdated: July 16, 2011, 3:49 PM
They are the fiercest-looking lovebirds you'll ever see, and they demonstrate their bond by eating dead rats side by side, wings touching.
The two seriously injured bald eagles, found two months apart and more than a mile away from each other near the Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge, were rescued and reunited in a wildlife rehabilitation facility in Medina last week.
Wildlife rehabilitator Wendi Pencille already was treating the female bald eagle, who snapped a tendon in her wing, at her Bless the Beasts Foundation, when she picked up the injured male bald eagle.
"What if he's her mate?" Pencille thought at the time.
The chances were slim, almost impossible. But these eagles beat the odds.
By their behavior, it is clear the two eagles were a bonded pair before their injuries, according to Pencille and other experts.
The bald eagles, a threatened species in New York, each wear state and federal bands, and it's possible that a photo of the pair on a nest together earlier this year could prove their bond.
But Pencille and other wildlife experts don't need photos -- the bald eagles' behavior tells the story.
The female was comfortably housed in a large flight cage, complete with tree stumps the bird could use as steps to climb to a perch.
The cage, which includes a pool stocked with fish, was perfect for another bald eagle with a damaged wing -- but only if the two didn't want to kill each other.
"Do we put him in another cage, or do we try to introduce him to her?" Pencille recalled thinking.
Two strange raptors will always clash, resulting in anything from a squawking squabble over a perch to a full-scale attack. Pencille donned her heavy leather gloves and entered the flight cage, prepared to separate the pair if the conflict got too serious.
Instead, when Pencille placed the bedraggled male on the floor, the female swiveled her head and stared at him with her light-colored, piercing eyes.
"He's afraid, because he's in the cage for the first time, then all of a sudden he calls to her, and she goes out of her mind," Pencille said. "She starts pacing the perch, calling and calling, she went crazy, as if when he made the noise she knew who it was."
The male, crying in return, began walking toward the female as she continued to call.
Halfway there, he stopped to eat a dead rat on the floor.
"She actually looked at him upside-down when he did that, as if to say, 'What?'" said Pencille, laughing.
Then, as Pencille watched in amazement, the female swooped down from her perch to get a closer look at the male. After spending a short time on the ground with him, the female hopped back to her perch using the stumps.
"She showed him how to get up on the perch," Pencille said. "He was afraid, but he finally followed her."
Making the final jump from the highest stump to the perch, the male scrambled, grabbed with both feet, then fell to the ground.
The female swooped to the floor, spent some time with him, then hopped up to the perch again, spreading her wings wide with each hop.
He hesitated, so she did it again.
"She repeatedly tried to herd him up on that perch," Pencille said. "She did it five or six times."
Finally, the male followed her, jumping from stump to stump. His final leap succeeded and he was on the perch next to the female.
Together, apparently again.
"They both settled down, they closed their beaks, they weren't panting, it was as if they had never been apart," Pencille said. "This behavior is unheard of when introducing raptors to each other. I am sure that they were a bonded pair.
"Then the next day, I go out and they are eating rats right next to each other, their wings touching."
Bless the Beasts received its first bald eagle three years ago and Pencille has worked with seven since then.
If the pair were not already bonded, "we would likely see much different behavior than Wendi witnessed," said Joel Thomas, wildlife administrator at the SPCA Serving Erie County.
"There would be much more territorial behavior. There would be some squabbling," he said.
Pencille caught the female on May 4 after a caller reported spotting a bald eagle down on a road in the Town of Shelby.
"I believe she hit power lines, which ended up snapping the tendon between her right elbow and wrist," said Pencille.
She chased the eagle down and grabbed her with her thick raptor gloves.
"She was very weak and emaciated and didn't fight us too much," she said.
The eagle was treated for an infection at the SPCA. With a wing span of more than 7 feet, the bird weighed just 8 pounds when she was caught. She has since gained 3 pounds.
"She is one of the biggest eagles we've ever seen," Pencille said.
"We believed that before her injury, the female had been part of a bonded pair, because there were four nests in the Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge, and one of the nests had failed" to produce chicks, Pencille said. "Our goal was to get her back out with the male, but obviously, due to her injury, that wasn't going to happen."
Two months later, Pencille got a call from Fish and Wildlife Service that an injured bald eagle had been caught on the Tonawanda State Management Area in Alabama.
The male, which is much smaller than the female, had lost the end of one wing and suffered talon injuries from a fight with another raptor, said Floyd "Sonny" Knowlton, a wildlife technician with the state DEC who caught the bird after several callers reported seeing him. The male was also treated by the SPCA in Tonawanda.
"There is nothing sadder than an eagle by itself in one of these rehab facilities," said Knowlton. "Eagles are very social and they like having company."
But, Knowlton says, "I'm not saying they are not a pair; they very well could be."
Photos could prove that the male and female had a nest together. "We don't really need that -- not in my opinion," Pencille said. "Not from the behavior we have seen."
And the eagles' nesting days may not be over. Because of the severity of their injuries, neither eagle will be able to be released to the wild.
"Eagles in captivity could have a nest -- we'd have to give them the facilities to do it, but there are places that do breeding of handicapped raptors," Pencille said.
When Bless the Beasts had only the female bald eagle, Pencille received a letter from the Endangered Species Unit, recommending that she stay there, for education and to foster any bald eagle chicks that might be found.
"As soon as we learned that the male was not releasable, I called the DEC right away and told them that we believe it is her mate. So if they can't stay with us together, send them to another facility but keep them together," Pencille said.
"It just feels like the right thing to do, to keep them together."
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