Positive ID: That Bird Was No Eagle

In tan khakis, a fishing hat and his Pomona Valley Audubon Society T-shirt, Milton Blatt peered through binoculars at the large brown bird perched atop the Walnut sheriff’s substation radio tower.

“I’m positive, absolutely positive,” he said Thursday. “That’s not a golden eagle. It’s a red-tailed hawk. See the white shanks and barred tail? Million to one it’s a red-tail.”

Nearby, Dr. Russell Rohde, a West Covina cardiologist and bird enthusiast, squinted through a telescope and nodded in agreement.

Then, a helicopter ride during which Blatt, Rohde and a sheriff’s deputy hovered near the tower for a few minutes, confirmed it: The empty nest on top was too small to be an eagle’s.

So ended a weeklong puzzle for local ornithologists and officials at the sheriff’s station, one that had dragged on ever since a maintenance worker discovered the nest while climbing to the top of the 130-foot tower. Circling in the air above, screeching loudly, were two large birds the worker took for eagles.

The California Department of Fish and Game and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service were immediately contacted. State officials sent Rohde, who at first identified the bird he spotted there as a golden eagle.

Blatt, sent out by the federal department, disagreed. He said it was an immature red-tailed hawk that hadn’t yet fully developed its distinctive red feathers.

Had it been a golden eagle, and had there been eggs in the nest, federal law would have prohibited disturbing it.

Still, with a twinkle of hope in his eyes, Rohde said Thursday there was a possibility that what he saw a few days before was a golden eagle. “I once saw a pair of golden eagles in Chino Hills,” he said, gazing wistfully to the east.