CHESTERTOWN — On Monday morning, staff from Washington College’s Center for Environment & Society rescued an adult bald eagle from the banks of the Chester River. David Kramer, director of CES’ River and Field Campus, offered his services after seeing a post on Facebook asking for help with an eagle that seemed to have an injured wing and foot and was hobbling around on a dock over the river.
Quickly, Kramer, an experienced avian rescuer, and two other CES staffers hopped in a truck and made their way over to where the bird had been sighted.
After the eagle tried to fly across the river and crashed into the water, Kramer and his colleagues drove across the bridge and requested access to a resident’s backyard to obtain the bird that made his way onto the opposite shore.
According to a Washington College news release, Kramer was able to approach the eagle swiftly, pin it gently and secure its feet before lifting it up.
“The bird rode shotgun in CES staffer Emma Cease’s lap on the way back to CES headquarters,” where it was inspected and placed in a crate until it could be picked up by TriState Bird Rescue, according to the news release.
Kramer, who has years of experience rescuing, researching and working with bald eagles and other birds, is a listed rescuer with Tristate Bird Rescue and Moon Owl Raptor Center. He urges people in the Chesapeake Bay region to call in the professionals if they spot an eagle or other large bird that is in need of help.
“You can look up a few local rehabbers, and you can always call the Department of Natural Resources for help,” Kramer said.
If you don’t have handling experience, don’t approach the bird, he added.
“Bald eagles have three sharp ends, if they can get you with one, they will,” Kramer said in the news release. “The thing is to get the bird safely restrained. We want to limit injury to people as well as the bird.”
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Washington College’s Center for Environment & Society is no stranger to bird encounters.
In the last year, staff at its Foreman’s Branch Bird Observatory have caught, identified, banded and released 13,000-plus birds representing more than 125 species including herons, owls, ospreys, hawks, orioles, woodpeckers, hummingbirds, blackbirds, wrens, mockingbirds, bluebirds and robins.
A full account of birds banded by the station is updated daily during spring and fall migration seasons and logged publicly at https://www.trektellen.org/site/totals/3460/2023.
Located on the Chester River in Queen Anne’s County, a few miles north of Chestertown, the bird observatory is nestled in a waterfront refuge on Washington College’s River and Field Campus. The land serves as an important stopover habitat for shorebirds and is home to thousands of migrating and wintering ducks and geese each year.
The college’s riverfront campus also encompasses several acres of experimental grasslands and valuable scrub-shrub habitats where summer breeding research is conducted on several species native to the area.
The college’s River and Field Campus encompasses nearly 5,000 acres of diverse ecological communities just minutes from its main campus in Chestertown, including 2.5 miles of Chester River shoreline; a 90-acre freshwater lake; multiple streams and seasonal wetlands; 1,200 acres of forest; 3,000 acres of agricultural fields; and 228 acres of restored native prairie with natural grasses that have allowed northern bobwhite quail to flourish.
The property also features 50 acres of managed, successional habitat for one of the most active bird-banding stations on the East Coast, handling about 4,000 birds a year.
To learn more, see https://www.washcoll.edu/learn-by-doing/ces/index.php.
One Response
To the people involved, Thank you and to the national symbol, speedy recovery.