Lone timid eaglet
 

Well, the Eagle breeding season is over and the eagle watchers are all gone from the eagles nest in the high tension tower on the Walnut Grove multi-modal path, not to mention Mama and Papa Eagle.

But every morning when I walk through, there remains a single eaglet perched over the old nest. He's been sitting there for a couple of weeks, now, like he's afraid to take the plunge. You never see his brother/sister, or either of his parents, anywhere around. He's starting to look a little scroungy, too, like maybe Mom and Dad have quit feeding him. In the afternoon, I go to the dog park, and I used to see his parents hunting or just taking a break on the next tower (and probably sizing up the little dogs on the other side of the fence!). But they've been gone for at least a week.

I guess there's nothing to be done. You certainly can't ask someone to risk electrocution on a 10,000 volt tower just to rescue an eagle who's too chicken to leave the nest. It's sad though. It makes you aware how many little tragedies like this must go on all the time in the natural world. And its weird to realize that animals have different personalities, same as us. A timid eagle -- whodathunkit?

Oh no! How sad.

Get your drone out and drop the eaglet a mouse or two.

Nature is both amazing and brutal. Who knows. Perhaps, the parents have been shot. Perhaps, that chick is injured. Perhaps, that chick is genetically damaged. Population control? Unlike humans, for many wild animals when population builds to high, the stress causes them to control their own numbers. If, it is a timid eagle, it will not survive. It will not reproduce. If it was allowed to do so it would weaken the species.

Well, we can all relax. He apparently worked up the nerve to fly away this weekend, probably the day after I posted about it. Maybe he reads TOTV. I haven't seen him all week.

It's still weird. Last year we had one attempt to fly away too soon, and when I walked by, I found him flopping around on the ground, looking longing up at the nest, with Mom and Dad worrying about him from the tree tops (and a few villagers doing the same from the ground). Somebody eventually removed him to Homosassas, from what I heard.

We always think of Eagles as fearless defenders of freedom. Turns out they have adolescent growing pains, same as all of us. Just regular folks!