When we returned from our road trip, the eagle nest had collapsed and was about a third of the size it had been. The rest of it was on the ground at the base of the tree. Alfie, the eaglet, was perched on a rock on the hill the other side of our driveway.
We talked to the wildlife people who thought we should feed him. They brought things for Alfie to eat. Here is what we learned. Alfie wasn’t in favour of herring, left it lying on the ground at the base of his rock. He liked quail okay. A parent would land and twitter at him, then lean down and rip off a bit of meat and feed it to him, beak to beak. Alfie likes rabbit quite well. He began to eat his own, pinning it to the ground with a talon and ripping the skin and meat off it.
His beak began to turn yellow, and his legs and feet. Then one day, he flew away. He came back the next day, landed in a tree to twitter at my husband, who had fed him all this time. DH twittered back, then Alfie flew off. He hasn’t been back.
(I told DH his eagle language might not be great and he might have said something that offended Alfie, we aren’t sure. 🙂 )
That’s so cool! I’m glad you were able to help Alfie to survive. In the wild, he might not have fared as well.
Thanks Jacquie. That’s what we were afraid of. We have racoons and other predators around, cougars and so on. We were afraid he might become a target, but it seemed to work out okay after all. 🙂