A baby bald eagle that raised hopes this week when it spread its wings and flew for the first time died on Wednesday after falling into a ditch.
Brighton’s Raptor Education Foundation, which had volunteers watching over the eaglet after she hatched close to an exit ramp off E-470 in Commerce City, announced on its Facebook page that she died before she could be taken to a veterinary hospital.
“It is no small matter, the death of an eagle. And this eagle was very special to many, many people,” Anne Price, the foundation’s curator of raptors wrote in a Facebook post. “All of us, from the men on the ground at the nest, to myself, and I know many of you, are shedding many tears.”
According to the post, the foundation’s director, Peter Reshetniak, and a district wildlife manager with Colorado Parks & Wildlife noticed that the eaglet had moved off of the log where she was sitting. The two men eventually found the eaglet in a muddy ditch, trapped by the high banks.
The baby bald eagle died shortly after vomiting muddy water in one of the men’s arms.
“It does not matter that she was never truly “ours,” Price wrote. “We who watch and work with eagles knew that the odds were against her from the start…But to have the privilege of witnessing her parent’s hard work, their determination to reproduce in the most unlikely of places, their (if you will forgive my anthropomorphizing for a moment) leap of faith in re-building and expanding a historically-successful hawk nest, was an extraordinary journey for all of us.”
Zahira Torres: 303-954-1244, ztorres@denverpost.com or twitter.com/zahiratorres
