How’s that song go? “Love is a many splendored thing.”
In this case the lyrics could be changed to “Love is a many feathered thing.”
While we American humans keep getting divorced at record rates, true commitment in nature isn’t that uncommon. Many birds, including bald eagles, mate for life.
And a rare fowl reunion took place at a wildlife rehabilitation facility in Medina, New York in a story reported by NPR.
A female bald eagle was brought in with an injury to its wing that would keep it from ever being released back into the wild. Two months later, the facility was contacted about taking in another injured eagle. The second bird was found in the same general area where the original eagle was recovered. Both were believed to have suffered their injuries due to flying into power lines instead of having a more lethal encounter with airplanes.
Forced due to limited space, raptor rehabilitator Wendi Pencille put the two in the same cage despite the fact that the predatory birds can rarely coexist in such a confined area. Like the eagles found tangled up in a woman’s front yard, sometimes they don’t even get along out in the wild.
Instead of a fight, the two eagles almost immediately began to interact in a nurturing manner.
An eagle expert was contacted about the unusual and unexpected gentleness between the two. He confirmed the suspicions that the male and female were likely a mating pair that had been reunited.
Due to injuries that will keep them both from being returned to the wild, the love birds will spend the rest of their lives together in captivity. Maybe someday the wildlife facility will be able to put up a webcam focused on the pair’s nest like the one in Iowa that captivated web surfers this spring.