Bald Eagles Flying South--on Airliners

Tennessee eagle No. 3 looked glum.

In just two hours, the bald eaglet had been plucked from its nest in a tall spruce, lowered to the ground in a sack, put in a portable pen and ferried on a bouncing skiff to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service vessel.

The chick was one of more than 300 bald eagles captured in Alaska and moved to other states as part of an effort to replenish stocks of the rare national bird.

The bald eagle, an endangered species in other states because of lead poisoning, pollution and other man-made dangers, is abundant in southeast Alaska, where biologists have counted about 12,000 of them--equal to their number in all the other states combined.

The region has become the stocking ground for eagle-recovery programs in five lower states.

“The demand for birds is getting so great the supply can’t meet the demand, and Alaska’s been a great bonanza for us,” said Robert D. Smith of the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, which hopes to release 60 young bald eagles by 1990.

Hundreds of Reinforcements

Including 46 exported this year, Alaska has contributed 264 bald eagles to New York, Indiana, Missouri, North Carolina and Tennessee, said Mike Jacobson of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Juneau.

From 1980 through 1987, 400 eagles from Alaska and elsewhere were relocated in more than a dozen other states, authorities say.

Sightings of eagles and nests make biologists confident that the program is succeeding, though they won’t have statistical proof of it for a few years.

An eagle expedition begins with time-consuming helicopter surveys. Fish and game agents fly over about 200 miles of coastline each spring to spot the nests. Although an eagle nest may be 8 feet wide, the sticks, grass and other building materials used make them impossible to spot in the forest.

Come July, biologists from other states fly in and board two 65-foot military-surplus vessels run by the Fish and Wildlife Service. The capturing area is half a day away, in the middle of the Tongass National Forest.

Snatched From Nests

Once there, Tennessee conservationist Kevin Schutt and fellow tree-scaler Dave Evans climb up to the nests.

While they ascend, the parent eagles fly in agitated circles or perch in trees nearby, keening and trilling. They shy away from the climbers, and the young birds don’t resist.

“Eagles, they’re pretty docile,” said Schutt.

“I don’t think they’ve (climbers) ever been struck on this project. It would be kind of unnerving to be 80 feet up a tree and struck by a bird that’s 12 to 14 pounds,” said Fish and Wildlife’s Phil Schempf.

Though the young eagles appear nearly full-sized when they are captured at 6 to 7 weeks old, their feathers are soft and their bodies are not yet ready for flight. They begin flying at 10 to 12 weeks.

Go ‘Bald’ at Age 3

They don’t get the characteristic white head and tail feathers until they are 3 or 4 years old. The fledgling plumage varies in color from dark brown to mottled brown and white.

Caretakers band the chicks’ legs for identification and dust them with flea powder to kill lice.

Once powdered, measured and registered, the eagles ride out the trip in relative comfort, dining twice daily on diced halibut and snapper.