Sailing through the air with its colossal, 2m wings outstretched, white head and yellow beak contrasting with its dark body, there’s no mistaking one of North America’s most iconic birds: the bald eagle.
The USA’s national bird has had a rollercoaster ride. Many people are familiar with the species’ astounding recovery following a brush with extinction, but one chapter in this incredible success story usually flies under the radar: a young woman alone in the woods, hand-feeding a vulnerable pair of eagle chicks.
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Before she had landed this unusual role as eagle foster-mother, Tina Morris, a graduate from Cornell University, knew little about these birds. “I have to admit,” she recalls, “there were many times when I thought ‘what on Earth am I doing here? How exactly am I going to manage this?’”.
Her work was a vital intervention. Once abundant across the USA, the bald eagle was nearly eradicated by the mid-1900s as a result of hunting, habitat destruction and, most significantly, the pesticide DDT, a cheap and effective chemical that had been widely used in agriculture and as a malaria control since the 1940s.
DDT was a disaster for bald eagles. It was banned in 1972, but the damage had already been done. The chemical lingers in the environment for many years, becoming increasingly concentrated as it travels up the food-chain. It washed into rivers and was absorbed by fish, which were then eaten by the eagles and other birds of prey. The contamination had catastrophic consequences for the birds’ reproduction. When a female laid her eggs, the chemical caused the shells to become so weak that they couldn’t withstand their parents’ weight, becoming crushed during incubation.
This majestic bird had been adopted as the national emblem of the USA back in 1782, partly as a symbol of strength and also because the species is endemic to North America. At this point, there may have been around 100,000 bald eagles in the wild. By 1963, numbers had reached a record low, with just 417 nesting pairs remaining. “It really showed what incredible damage that pesticide caused,” says Tina.
Back from the brink
To help bring the species back from the brink, Tina was tasked with devising a ‘hacking’ programme (raising birds without parents) that would become a blueprint for others to follow. The project was a key part of a wider effort to repopulate the species across eastern North America, and followed in the wake of a hacking programme for captive-bred peregrine falcons, developed by ornithologist Tom Cade. Tina had been desperate to work with the peregrines, but the project was fully staffed. So, when the bald eagle programme launched, timed to coincide with the United States’ bicentennial celebrations on 4th July 1976, she leapt at the chance to take on its daily operations. She spent the next two years rearing a total of seven eaglets in Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge, New York, before handing over to the Department of Environmental Conservation in 1978.
Unlike the peregrines, nobody was captive-breeding bald eagles in the 1970s. The starting point, therefore, was to take ‘spare’ chicks – bald eagles lay up to three eggs, but usually only successfully feed and raise two hatchlings – from populations in the Great Lakes states that had managed to evade the effects of DDT. These eaglets would be transferred to New York State to be raised by a human mother until they were ready to fly off on their own. That’s where Tina came in. “It was a huge responsibility,” she says, “but a tremendous honour.”
“They’re like teenagers”
Bald eagles nest in mature conifers and tall hardwoods, whose solid branches can support the weight of their massive dwellings. To replicate this, Tina and other researchers built a 1.5m eyrie using branches and sticks, designing it to resemble a natural nest as closely as possible, and placed it at the top of a tower made of telegraph poles. Two nine-week-old eaglets, who arrived by plane on 18th June, were the first to be installed. Tina recalls how, with beaks clacking and wings flailing, the youngsters “leapt onto the nest and stood like statues”.
And so began Tina’s new normal. Her accommodation was a tent at the foot of the tower (which flooded on her first night); her bathroom a latrine she dug herself. Other than the young eaglets above, her two dogs were her only companions.
Every day, Tina would rise at dawn and climb the tower to feed and care for her ‘babies’. She hadn’t told anyone that she was terrified of heights. With no manual to follow, she started by rigging up a long stick with a barbecue fork taped to the end, offering the birds carp she had fished herself from the spillway of a nearby dam. So that the eaglets wouldn’t associate humans with food, she had to conceal herself in a tiny hide, sitting cross-legged for hours at a time.
In the wild, bald eagles teach their young everything they need to know before fledging, such as how to swoop down and grab a fish from the river, and how to tear into its flesh with their curved beaks. “Parents normally break the prey open and let their chicks pull the meat out,” says Tina. “But these youngsters had to figure out how to break into a big, scaly fish on their own. They had to try everything out for the first time.”
During those early weeks, Tina spent hours noting down everything the eaglets did – feeding, preening, squabbling, flapping their wings. In time, she fitted the youngsters with radio-collars so that, when they fledged, she could track their movements and locate them when they inevitably fell and needed assistance. She learned everything there was to learn about how these birds grow and develop. “They’re like teenagers,” she recalls. “You find yourself sort of chuckling at some of the crazy things they do.”
Despite the bond she felt as their sole caretaker, Tina didn’t find it hard to remain aloof from her young charges. “Eagles are wild,” she says. “I know they could hurt me – if I tried to hug them, I would not be very happy, and neither would they.” Above all, she wanted to see the birds flying free.
Flying the nest
Adult eagles might soar majestically through the air, but their first forays into flight are rather less elegant. A fledgling is clumsy and doesn’t know how to land on tree branches, often descending to the ground like an “out-of-control helicopter”. While Tina’s eaglets were adapting to life in the air, she was on hand to rescue them after any mishaps. “If an eagle fell from the tower when practising for take-off,” she says, “I had to capture and restrain it, and carry it back up the ladder to the nest without being torn apart.”
Eventually, the young birds started to venture further from home, and Tina was filled with pride when, through her binoculars, she witnessed one of them make its first kill. She had succeeded in raising her charges to independence; before long, they would leave the tower for good and, hopefully, raise families of their own.
In September 1976, another young eagle came into Tina’s care, but was found dead, caught on a barbed-wire fence. Four more arrived in June 1977 and the process started again, this time with a bigger nest and researchers shadowing Tina in order to continue her work. A month later, a fifth bird, found in Minnesota with a broken leg, joined the foursome following its rehabilitation. This individual would go on to live for 38 years – the oldest bald eagle ever known – and produce an incredible 70 young.
Bald eagles can reach as much as 6.5kg in weight with a wingspan of up to two and a half metres, with females usually slightly larger than males. Their piercing yellow eyes can spot prey from 3km, and they can plummet at a breakneck speed of around 160kph to grab fish from the water with their piercing talons. The sight of these powerful birds can take your breath away, and despite having worked with them so closely, that’s still the case for Tina. “I’m used to seeing them and I’ve seen many,” she says. “But they still have that effect on me.”
The original aim of the hacking project was to boost numbers of breeding pairs in New York State, with the hope that the birds might disperse into neighbouring New England, “so we could also boost the population there from practically nothing to something,” says Tina. She could never have imagined just how effective the programme would be. By 2023, there were 426 breeding eagle pairs in New York and 917 in New England.
Thanks to its success, and that of other repopulation projects, plus the ban on DDT, the bald eagle had recovered enough to be delisted from the USA’s Endangered Species Act in 2007. Today, it can be found in every US state except Hawaii, and is designated as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List.
In many ways, the eagle’s resilience mirrors Tina’s own refusal to succumb to the many obstacles she faced. As a young woman in a male-dominated field, she had no female role-models to turn to for advice and inspiration. But she didn’t let the challenges distract her from her main goal: keeping her chicks alive. “The entire nation is going to know if they die,” she would tell herself, “And it will be on your watch.”
She took things one day, one moment, at a time. “I’ve got to make sure they have enough food. I’ve got to protect them, and I basically have to do what their parents would do,” she recalls. “If I do that, we’ll be okay.”
An uncertain future
Though bald eagles are flying once again in America’s skies, challenges remain. Poaching, avian flu, vehicle collisions, poisoning from lead shot used by hunters and chemical pollution all pose risks, and windfarms near nests can harm juveniles. “Young birds are very clumsy,” Tina says. “If they flew towards a windfarm, they wouldn’t be able to avoid those huge paddles.”
As someone who has always tried to avoid the limelight, Tina has, over the years, learned the power of telling the story of bald eagles. “Birds can’t speak,” she says, “and the only way we can save them – and all wildlife – is to speak for them”.
Return to the Sky: The Surprising Story of How One Woman and Seven Eaglets Helped Restore the Bald Eagle is published by Chelsea Green Publishing Co
Main image: Getty
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