GOING IT ALONE
Fate of eaglets now up to widowed male after mother died.
A pair of bald eagles defied the odds for years, successfully nesting in a lone spindly cottonwood tree on the Lafarge industrial site on Commissioner Street on Vancouver’s bustling waterfront.
When Lafarge, the multinational cement giant, built a new nesting platform atop a 20-metre-high wooden pole in 2009, the eagles used it for perching but continued nesting in the familiar cottonwood along Burrard Inlet.
And when their nest collapsed in a storm last October, the eagles still rejected the artificial platform and instead returned to fix up an old nest they’d used several years earlier in a residential area not far away on Kamloops near Pandora.
The pair seemed on track for yet another successful breeding season after hatching two eaglets seven to eight weeks ago.
Then disaster struck Saturday when the female was electrocuted by power lines while being chased by crows seeking to defend their own nests.
The loss has devastated conservationists who long worked to protect the pair and has left them wondering if the male eagle — now a single parent — can continue to successfully raise his young until they are fledged, in about four weeks.
“We are just heartsick over this tragedy,” confirmed Karen Bills, project co-ordinator for the Hancock Wildlife Foundation, which worked with Lafarge to install the artificial nest.
Martina Versteeg, bird care supervisor at the Orphaned Wildlife Rehabilitation Society (OWL) in South Delta, said a similar situation occurred about a month ago in Ladner when a female eagle was also electrocuted. The male quickly found another female mate and the two began to raise the single eaglet together.
But last week, the eaglet fell out of the nest during a wind storm and died, said Bills.
In the Vancouver case, it’s possible the male may keep providing food for the two. If one of the two falls out of the nest or is pushed out by the stronger sibling, OWL is prepared to care for the bird until it can be released back to the wild, Versteeg said.
Several individuals concerned about the fate of the eaglets gathered Tuesday near the fir tree containing the active nest. The two eaglets could be seen stretching their wings in preparation for flight in early July. More crows accompanied the father’s arrival.
Amateur photographer Jason Kazuta, who lives one block away on Dundas, allowed others to peer through his 600-millimetre telephoto lens to get a better look.
“I can see the nest from my back porch,” he said.
“Last night the crows were attacking the father; they came in like Luftwaffe. Then a seagull joined in.”
David Hancock, a bald eagle authority and founder of the Hancock Wildlife Foundation, said the surviving male is part of a pair that had extensive experience at raising two to three eaglets per year.
“I think there is every good optimistic hope ... the male will be able to find enough food and fledge both these young,” he said.