Eagle’s health brought back to par

Because most eagle injuries prove fatal, one last weekend with a happy ending put a big smile on the face of Department of Natural Resources conservation officer Burt Walters.

Walters was summoned Jan. 22 to a Postville veterinary clinic to pick up an adult male bald eagle found dazed and immobile in a roadside ditch.

Advised that the eagle on the clinic table had not moved in two hours, Walters checked the bird for a greenish discharge at its vent, which would have suggested lead poisoning, an increasingly common cause of death for wild eagles.

When that proved negative, Walters found the eagle's eyes clear and responsive to light, another good sign.

Still, he said he was not greatly encouraged when he put the bird in his garage for the night, intending to take it the next morning to the Macbride Raptor Project in Cedar Rapids.

Fearing the worst, he opened his garage door Saturday morning to find “an aggressive and alert eagle bouncing around the garage.”

When Walters got the bird outside, he bounded twice on the snow before taking flight, gradually gaining altitude until he was just a speck over the town of McGregor.

“I watched him glide and circle until I could no longer see him,” said Walters, who concluded that the stunned eagle had recovered from a brush with either a vehicle or a utility line.