Eagle Rescue, a love story?

On February 14 local naturalist Dana Visalli was looking for moose tracks when he found an eagle hanging upside down from a limb near the top of a 50-60’ tall pine tree near the home of Bernie Hosey.

“Without binoculars it looked like two eagles very close together, an unlikely sight,” he said. With binoculars, it was clear the bald eagle had wedged one of its feet in the “V” of an outer branch. Visalli speculated the bird had been hanging for a short time when he came first came across it.

Calls to local bird biologist Kent Woodruff and to the North Cascades Smokejumper Base resulted in a team with the right qualifications to rescue the stranded bird. On a still and sunny afternoon, the group strategized in Hosey’s driveway: what to do when freeing a frightened raptor with a wing span between 5.5 feet to 7.5 feet and flesh tearing talons? “It’s important to keep your arms away from the talons,” advised Woodruff.

The team speculated that the eagle was drawn to the pine tree because of residual afterbirth and stillborns from cattle calving in the field below.

The smokejumpers prepared jumper Daren Belsby to climb just above the bird, where he tied a rope, held on the ground by jumpers Matt Woosley and Inaki Baraibar. Belsby was to cut the limb free and the rope would stop the stuck bird’s fall. But the eagle escaped when the limb first let loose. “It’s free!” shouted an observer.

The bird clearly had a sore foot as it flew off and made a few victory laps for the onlookers. Woodruff conjectured the bird’s leg was “stressed and sore from hanging” but he “anticipated a full recovery and success for the eagle.”

Reported by Maria Converse. Photo by Dana Vasalli