{"id":85554,"date":"2020-05-25T05:35:05","date_gmt":"2020-05-25T11:35:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=85554"},"modified":"2020-05-25T10:50:16","modified_gmt":"2020-05-25T16:50:16","slug":"update-on-eagle-power-and-the-decorah-eaglets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/25\/update-on-eagle-power-and-the-decorah-eaglets\/","title":{"rendered":"Update On ‘Eagle Power’ And The Decorah Eaglets"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two days ago I posted a mini-review of the new NOVA documentary on PBS entitled “Eagle Power”<\/a><\/span><\/span>. A reader has provided additional and relevant information on the black fly incident that was very nearly lethal to the Decorah eaglets that played a pivotal role in the documentary.<\/p>\n

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1\/1600, f\/8, ISO 500, Canon 40D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Yesterday I received the following email from David Mendel who is intimately familiar with the history of the famous Decorah (Iowa) eagles. David provided more detailed background on the black fly incident that nearly cost last year’s eaglets their lives and he explained why what happened to the Decorah eaglets wasn’t an isolated incident. In addition he provided a couple of links that some of my readers will very likely be interested in.<\/p>\n

Bird lovers take their eagles seriously, the Decorah eagles in particular. Over the years I’ve published almost 3000 posts to Feathered Photography and the most popular by far has been A Guide To Aging Bald Eagles<\/a><\/span><\/span> published way back in 2013. To this day it still gets more traffic than any other post in my archives so I figured that many of my readers would be interested in knowing more about the Decorah eagles in general and the challenges of last year’s eaglets in particular.<\/p>\n

Without further ado, here’s David’s email. It’s a fairly long read and may not be for everyone but I strongly suspect it will be of interest to many of my readers.<\/p>\n

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“RON, I was touched by your post yesterday (5\/23) regarding the NOVA documentary on Eagle Power. I wanted to comment on your post, but its been two days now and knowing people don’t go backwards in comments, was hoping that you might post this in a future post one way or another. I also didn\u2019t want to violate any protocol with cross posts. In any event, the bald eagle portion of the NOVA documentary reflects on the 2019 breeding season for the Decorah (Iowa) eagles. It summarizes the first year of the eaglets D32 and D33 lives. Maybe everyone knows the story… After the eaglets hatched, they developed in their amazing and normal way, but just prior to fledging is where the story takes a turn.<\/em><\/p>\n

As NOVA depicted the eaglets essentially jumped out of the nest due to the black fly infestation. Two things about this are important, first it wasn’t just the Decorah eagles that were impacted, it was raptors throughout the Midwest due to the very wet spring last year. The Raptor Resource Project (RRP) is the internet home of the Decorah eagles and several other raptor internet nesting sites and I couldn’t recommend more strongly that people who love raptors should visit their website. BTW, it was RRP that tuned me on to Feathered Photography a couple of years ago with a reference to your blog.<\/em><\/p>\n

The second important thing was the story behind the rehabilitation of D32 and D33 which NOVA only very lightly touched on. D33 came out of the “jump” in relatively good physical shape and she was sent to “Saving Our Avian Resources” or “SOAR” for flight rehabilitation and to allow her to build her survival skills prior to release. My recollection is that she was dehydrated and anemic from the fly bites, but otherwise was intact. She was released in September.<\/em><\/p>\n

The older sibling, D32 however was in worse shape due to a fractured leg bone, but also had the same ailments as D33. His fracture was in a pretty precarious place and SOAR had a very guarded prognosis for quite a while. They didn\u2019t know if his fracture could heal well enough to ever allow for release due to being very close to a joint. He was very lame initially and took quite a while to get to the point of putting weight on his broken leg. Amazingly, D32 did heal completely and followed D33\u2019s release, but not until March 2020.<\/em><\/p>\n

Obviously without intervention by humans this story probably would not have had the happy ending. I\u2019ve been watching Mom Decorah for about 7 years (and now her second mate DM2). The webcams RRP has are amazing and watching all year has taught me so much about eagle behavior. It is a privilege to witness what they do year after year.<\/em><\/p>\n

I hope you can share this short story with your readers in some way. The websites I visit are posted below for reference. They are quality people really only interested in what is best for our avian friends, particularly raptors. Take care Ron, and if you can\u2019t post this for what ever reasons I totally understand.<\/em><\/p>\n

RRP: www.raptorresource.org<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/em>
\nSOAR: soarraptors.org<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Take care, stay safe and Healthy<\/em><\/p>\n

Regards, David”<\/em><\/p>\n

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Thank you, David. I learned some things and I suspect many of my readers did too.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Notes:<\/em><\/p>\n