[pfdietz]

I went to a presentation on the reintroduction of the bald eagle to New York state. When handling young eagles, the presenter (then much younger) found the best way to immobilize them was stuff them into the leg of her pants (not when she was wearing the pants, mind you.)

She had to constantly do this as they fledged, since they couldn't get back up to the platform where the nest was. In the wild, the parents would continue to feed the young after they left the nest but before they could fly, but that wasn't practical for her to do.

The process of raising raptors from eggs is called "hacking", so it's entirely appropriate for this site. Normally done on hawks, this project showed it would work with eagles too.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hack#dictionary-e...

[fallinghawks]

The Cooper's hawk is known to falconers and rehabbers as fitting perfectly inside a (clean) Pringles can. ;)

I must correct you on hacking, though. This process starts with just-fledged raptors, already grown to full size, fully feathered, but raised in closed quarters. They are put in a shelter surrounded by plenty of space for flying where they can see the outdoors, and they are fed daily for a few days to acclimate. Then the shelter is opened and they're allowed to explore. Food continues to be provided daily. The day that one of the birds doesn't come back for its daily feeding indicates it has caught something on its own, and is ready to be recaptured and trained as a falconry bird.

This process allows the birds to learn flying and hunting as if they were wild raptors. It reduces certain negative behaviors you get in human-imprinted birds, and gives them "street smarts" i.e. recognizing and avoiding other predators. These days of course we put telemetry tags on them so they're easy to locate and recover.

As metaphor it would be training to deal with the wide wild world, which HN has a bit of too.

[pfdietz]

I stand corrected, or at least clarified!

Back in the day of this eagle effort, some four decades ago, she had to track them by eye in the swamps of Montezuma Wildlife Refuge and wade out to retrieve them. Not fun, but hey that's what grad students are for.

Her book: https://www.amazon.com/Return-Sky-Surprising-Eaglets-Restore...

The last effort to reintroduce bald eagles in the US was wound down in Tennessee in 2003. Today they're everywhere and are off the endangered species list. I see them quite often when out birding in the Finger Lakes of New York.

[fallinghawks]

I was driving from Albany to Binghamton last week and spotted my first BE in the wild over 88. Fully mature, bright white head and tail. I'm into hawks and falcons and don't go out of my way to look for BEs, so it was lucky, and pretty neat.

In the Bay Area where I normally live we've had bald eagles nesting in at least 2 locations -- Crystal Springs reservoir, and next to a middle school in Milpitas, which is rather surprising considering how suburban Milpitas is.