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Quick response helps save our Nation's emblem

Fred Stabbert III - Publisher
Posted 5/24/19

PARKSVILLE - The call to 9-1-1 came in at 8 a.m. Tues- day.

A bald eagle was sitting alongside Old Route 17 near Parksville and appeared to be hurt.

New York State Trooper Troy Parucki sped …

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Quick response helps save our Nation's emblem

Posted

PARKSVILLE - The call to 9-1-1 came in at 8 a.m. Tues- day.

A bald eagle was sitting alongside Old Route 17 near Parksville and appeared to be hurt.

New York State Trooper Troy Parucki sped into action, arriving at the scene in minutes.

“It was a good-sized immature bald eagle but when I approached it, the bird start- ed hopping away,” Trooper Parucki said.

Not knowing how the bird got injured and not wanting to injure it further, Trooper Parucki secured the scene and called the NYS DEC for assistance.

Environmental Conservation Officers Tom Koepf and

Michael Hameline soon arrived to help capture the bird without further injury.

The officers determined that the eagle had an injured beak and wing and was badly malnourished.

Helping Hand

The DEC officers then con- tacted rehabilitor Missy Run- yon at Friends of the Feathered and Furry Wildlife in Hunter and told her that they were on the way.

After she examined the bird, Missy knew right away what had happened.

“The eagle had had a fish hook lodged inside its mouth and when it tried to get it out he hurt himself,” she said.

The hook apparently was inside a fish which a fisher- man had hooked and the line broke off. When the eagle caught the fish for dinner, the line was stuck around a tree or rock in the brook, trapping the eagle.

As the hooked eagle tried to get the hook out of its mouth, it broke its lower mandible bone and pulled all the soft tissue inside its mouth.

“It also used its talons to try and free itself from the hook and in doing so had a self-in- flicted talon wound to its left wing.

“This eagle was born last year and we operated immediately, putting a fixator on the beak to keep it aligned while it heals,” Missy said.

“The beak was also pinned.” Missy said the bird was going to be operated on again last night to put a new brace on and in a few weeks X-rays will ensure the beakwas perfectly aligned. “We stabilized the bird and

gave him a fresh rainbow trout to fatten him up a little,” she said. As birds of prey depend on catching their food, there is little doubt this eagle would not have survived without the help of Trooper Parucki, EnCon officers Koepf and Hameline and rehabilitor Runyon.

The beaks are made of keriton and will grow back and soon “Baldy” will be in a flight cage for rehabilitation.

The flight cage is 103 feet long by 20 feet high and 20 feet wide.

“It also has a 10-foot by 20- foot stocked trout pond in it so we can make sure our birds can feed themselves before they are released,” she said. “We hope he is better sometime between two and four months from now.

“We are worried about infection [to the talon wounds],” Missy said. “This was a very lucky eagle, there was no room for error.”

One last word from Missy is that she urges all fishermen to please clean up near the stream, especially if they break off and can retrieve their hook or spinner. She also asked for no lead

sinkers, which can also poison birds of prey. Other Eagle news

Brothers Leo and Bill Rosenberger were visiting Callicoon from Pennsylvania over the weekend to do some trout fishing in the Callicoon Creek.

Suddenly Leo saw three birds under a tree and thought they might be young turkeys.

However, upon further inspection he realized they were three young eagles.

“It looked like the eaglets were being raised on the ground by the amount of food scraps in the area,” Leo said. “It also looks like a good fishing place. At one point there were five adult eagles circling overhead and they were not happy.”

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