Carnage on the road

Last week, I received a telephone call from Gary Hostick of Sisters who shared a tragic experience with me; he had found a severely injured Golden Eagle alongside the road out near Alfalfa.

The eagle had a mangled wing and would never fly again.

The tragic part of this disaster is that it could have probably been avoided if the driver of the rig that hit the eagle had been traveling slower.

The only positive thing about this tragic accident is that the eagle was banded. As it turns out, I am the one who banded the eagle back in 1982.

The site where the nest is located has a history of abuse and human intrusion. One day in the spring of 1965, while employed at OMSI in Portland as the staff naturalist, I received a phone call from Chet Kibee, biologist in the Portland Office of what was then the Oregon Game Commission.

“Jim…” Chet began with exasperation obvious in his voice, “I have a big problem with a guy who has a golden eagle nesting in his quarry near Brothers and I need your help.”

We had a long discussion regarding the threat to the nesting eagle and decided it was best to confront the situation head-on, so he set up a meeting with the landowner, and we were off for the long trip from Portland to Brothers the next day.

What we met up with was a belligerent landowner that wanted to open his quarry to obtain rock for a road-widening contract adjacent to the quarry — eagle or no eagle.

It was not a pleasant meeting, but came to what could be considered a “happy ending” only after some very bitter arguing and a lot of cussing on the part of the landowner, who finally agreed to open another quarry he owned close by.

The pair of eagles was left alone to finish hatching their eggs and raising their two young — and if it were possible for them to do so, they must have breathed a great sigh of relief and thanks to get the job done successfully.

This was my second year of banding raptors, so I climbed the tree in the quarry (unbeknownst to the landowner) and banded the two young before they fledged.

The next year the eagle moved north about 200 yards and built a new nest in the top of a sprawling western juniper at the foot of a huge rattlesnake-infested scree slope, and the female laid two eggs.

No one bothered them in their new location, and when the nestlings were about five weeks old, I banded them both. For over 12 years I went back to the same site, banded the nestlings and never got caught.

Then, in 1980, I witnessed a chilling change in the behavior of the nestlings at that site: fratricide broke out.

Fratricide (siblings killing and sometimes eating each other) is not uncommon in eagles when food (jackrabbits) is short, but it was the first time I had seen it since I began banding eagles in Central Oregon. It happened again in 1981 and in 1982; that year I went back and placed band number 629-00572 on the tarsus of the surviving youngster.

In the year 2000 the landowner died and the eagles moved back to their old home nest in the quarry…

Here it is, 2006, and eagle 629-00572 has provided information on where it was banded, by whom, the reason and where it was at the moment of the encounter — unfortunately death — and some background on its family history.

Prior to the time when President Nixon lowered the speed limit to 55 mph, death by vehicle collision was the number-one killer of eagles (electrocution and shooting were running a close second). Now we’re going too fast again and eagles can’t get out of the way, especially in winter when they are feeding on road-kill deer.

Please, slow down when you are driving through known deer corridors where road-kills occur and eagles come to feed.

You may just save one of my old acquaintances from death and injury, and save a lot of money on your insurance.