Eaglet falls from collapsing nest at St. Patrick's park, now in rehab

SOUTH BEND — One of three eaglets in the partially collapsed eagle nest at St. Patrick’s County Park is being nursed back to health after it had fallen from the nest last week.

The nonprofit Humane Indiana Wildlife Rehabilitation and Education Center in Valparaiso is caring for the young raptor. That means it is no longer — at least, not for now — in view of the live internet “eagle cam” that the University of Notre Dame has trained on the nest.

So far, an X-ray shows nothing broken in ND17, as the eaglet is named, the agency’s director, Nicole Harmon, said. There isn’t any deep tissue bruising either.

But the eaglet will likely remain in rehab for a matter of weeks until he learns to fly on his own, she said. Then ND 17 would be returned home.

June 2022: Eagle nest suffers partial collapse at St. Patrick's County Park in South Bend

The other two eaglets, who are larger and a few days older, have recently started to fly about as they sometimes return to the partial nest for food from their parents. It could be several more weeks before they are skilled enough to leave the nest permanently — typically in late summer.

“He (ND17) has to be able to get back to the nest on his own accord,” Harmon said, noting that the young birds still need to learn hunting and social skills. “There is so much learning that happens with the parents. That is so important that he gets that from his parents.”

About half of the nest had suddenly collapsed on June 21. It has continued to erode — now about a quarter of its original size — as the eaglets have kept using the nest as an occasional landing spot and dinner table.

Brett Peters, who manages the camera as assistant director of Notre Dame’s Linked Experimental Ecosystem Facility, and park staff monitored the eagle family’s progress.

Then, last week, park staff noticed that the smallest and youngest of the eaglets fell as all three were jockeying for space, Leslie Witkowski, deputy director of St. Joseph County Parks, said. She checked on the bird every morning for about three days, looking from a distance, as ND17 flapped its wings and hissed the first day, then moved from the ground to a branch on the following days — all good signs of strength. After three days, though, Harmon came to help assess on June 30.

“If he was perfectly healthy, we would have left him out there,” Harmon said.

Instead, she found that the eaglet was emaciated and dehydrated and in peril of not surviving if he remained there through the weekend. ND17 wasn’t receiving food often enough from his parents. She took the eaglet to the agency’s rehab facility, where, Harmon said, he has been eating and gaining weight and energy, showing a healthy dose of feistiness.

Humane Indiana Wildlife takes in and rehabs close to 1,000 birds every year, from song birds to raptors, among other wildlife from at least 10 counties across northwest Indiana, Harmon said. It sees at least 100 birds of prey each year, but this is just the seventh or eighth eagle it’s helped since it opened in 2014.

The last time it aided a fledgling eaglet, she said, it had sustained injuries that prevented it from returning home. ND17, at least, has a good chance of re-entering the eagle cam’s limelight.

As for the nest, Witkowski and Peters still say it’s hard to predict whether the adult eagles will eventually stay and rebuild here or move elsewhere. For now, the parents’ energies are focused on rearing their young.

Find Tribune staff writer Joseph Dits on Facebook at SBTOutdoorAdventures or 574-235-6158 or jdits@sbtinfo.com.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Eaglet falls from nest at St. Patrick's County Park in wildlife rehab