Time to take flight!
A pair of baby bald eagles in Long Island have begun to “take wing” and could be soaring the skies in time to celebrate Independence Day, according to Public News Service.
The bald eagle nest located at the Nature Conservancy’s Mashomack Preserve on Shelter Island has been monitored from afar for months, and resource manager Mike Scheibel says the two baby eagles have been growing very fast.
“At least one of the birds is physically out of the nest a short distance,” Scheibel said. “So they’re capable of some short practice flights.”
The exact location of the nest has been heavily guarded, and the preserve’s staff chooses to stay far away from it to avoid disturbing the eagles’ parents and causing them to desert their young.
“In the early part of the process, they’re the most dangerous; the adults don’t have as much investment in terms of energy and time,” Scheibel said. “But as time goes on and the young grow, I think we’re through the woods now — we’re at a period where they’re going to stick with it.”
Scheibel says the entire state of New York was down to just one bald eagle nest in the mid-1970s, but the Department of Environmental Conservation launched a 13-year restoration program by releasing young eagles from Alaska into the wild in New York.