Residents, nonprofit team up to rescue injured eagle

SANDPOINT — Raptor biologist Jane Fink is fond of saying that it takes a neighborhood to save an eagle.

That is precisely what happened last Friday in the city’s Northshore neighborhood, when an injured bald eagle was discovered on a steep, brush-covered section of Lake Pend Oreille shoreline.

Ken Sanger was walking his dog, Roux, on an undeveloped lot when an eagle emerged and began flapping and running.

“She wasn’t flying very well and it went into the brush that goes down to the lake,” said Sanger.

Sanger went to investigate and discovered the bird.

Even in the fading light, he could tell that the eagle was in distress.

“I’ve never seen a bird’s breast beat like that. It was really traumatized,” Sanger said.

Sanger called Tamara Verby for help. Verby remembered Fink from her demonstration at the Festival at Sandpoint’s family concert last summer. Fink and her husband operate Birds of Prey Northwest in St. Maries.

Birds of Prey Northwest, a nonprofit, is federally permitted to give medical care to injured eagles, falcons and owls.

“We have large facilities to hold them and lots of experience to get them back on the wing,” said Fink.

Given the hour of evening, Fink hoped to talk neighbors through the process of capturing such a bird, but they were uncomfortable conducting an amateur rescue and opted to wait until Fink could make it to town.

“Fortunately, she survived and Jane and her husband arrived the next morning to mount a rescue, which was difficult even for them,” Verby said.

The couple concluded that the full-grown female eagle likely had a nest in the area with eaglets awaiting her return.

At Birds of Prey’s sanctuary, it was determined that the eagle’s wings were bruised and she must have collided with something.

“The bird’s quite lucky that it didn’t get a fracture from whatever it collided with,” Jane Fink said.

There’s no telling what the bald eagle collided with.

“She’s not talking,” said Fink.

The eagle is convalescing with two six-week-old eaglets that lost their mother in an attack by another eagle.

“The bird’s doing very well. We hope to release it in a few days,” said Fink.

Verby is grateful northern Idaho has a resource such as Birds of Prey Northwest.

“Jane does a superb service for the raptors of northern Idaho, fulfilling a need of which few are capable. She is knowledgeable, educational and compassionate, and her work is clearly an act of love.”

• For more information about Birds of Prey Northwest or to make a donation, visit www.birdsofpreynorthwest.org.