Angry birds locked in combat

Shortly after dawn on March 8, a Polson-area homeowner glanced out his window and noticed a group of crows pecking at what appeared to be a pair of dead bald eagles in his yard.

After arriving at the scene, biologist Steph Gillin discovered that the birds were alive, but locked together head-to-toe — each eagle’s talons piercing deep into the other’s face.

“When we got to them, it was unreal,” said Gillin, a wildlife biologist for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. “We deal with bald eagles quite often, but generally they’re injured and don’t have a lot of fight. ... They were still pretty feisty.”

Like other birds of prey, bald eagles are aggressive, territorial animals. Gillin guessed that given the ongoing nesting season, the raptors were likely sparring over territory or food. And when they become stressed, she added, their tendency is to squeeze tighter.

“There was no way to separate them without clipping [their talons],” she said. “At first I tried to pry them out, and there was no way. They were both so stubborn and so locked in place that they were not letting loose. I ended up having to clip three total.”

Both birds were suffering extensive head trauma, so Gillin called Byron Crow, a volunteer with the Wild Wings Recovery center in Kalispell. Crow, who specializes in primary bird care, jumped in his car and headed south to meet them.

“As soon as we got them separated, they were reared and ready to go, trying to get at each other,” Gillin said.

Her colleague, biologist Kari Eneas, and tribal game warden Darwin Parker held the injured birds down while Gillin ran to the car and grabbed a pair of dog kennels for transporting them.

Crow met them partway, then brought the birds to the Montana Wild Wings Recovery center east of Kalispell.

Crow treats birds with injuries ranging from car collisions to gunshots to lead poisoning, but he said the two eagles presented a unique challenge for the volunteers at the center.

“The first thing is to stop the bleeding,” Crow said. “That huge capillary is just pushing blood out every time the heart beats.”

Complicating the job was the eagles’ substantial weaponry.

“When you have lacerations, open wounds and missing talons, you’re dealing with an angry bird but also a cascade of problems,” he said. “You’re working on one part of the foot, trying not to get hooked by the other part, and you have to just keep dumping the coagulant on it. ... It’s like working with dynamite during a house fire.”

Volunteers also had to contend with the birds’ powerful mandibles, which are commonly used to rip frozen meat from animal carcasses in the winter.

“That whole building was trashed, full of blood and dust,” Crow said. “People get to see the bird releases, and it’s beautiful, but they don’t necessarily realize the chaos that goes on here.”

One of the birds, assigned number 16-07 (the center’s seventh bald eagle in 2016), succumbed to a head injury last weekend. Between the blown appearance of its eyes and the half-inch hole left by a talon that was embedded more than an inch into its nasal cavity and skull, Crow said he believes it suffered a concussion and was bleeding internally in its brain.

But the fact that the other eagle — 16-06 — has survived is an unlikely success story, he said. It’s currently in stable condition while it regrows its hallux, the opposing toe on its talons that provides the majority of its balance.

“I’m hoping two weeks at the most,” Crow said Tuesday. “If I see growth on that hallux, we can release him.”

Wild Wings, a nonprofit organization, strives to release recovered birds as soon as possible. Just the stress of captivity can be enough to kill a raptor, and caretakers minimize interactions that could dull the birds’ natural aversion to people.

“Since they are wild birds, every day in captivity is a day of stress,” Crow said. “We want to keep that fight-or-flight instinct, so that when we release him, he’ll want to get away. He won’t want to be around humans.”

The center is located at the home of executive director Beth Watne and her husband, Bob, overlooking the braided Flathead River east of Kalispell.

It includes several “cribs” — large bird cages that provide more space than the converted dog kennels used to transport and contain severely injured patients. A pair of large buildings on the property house eight-by-eight-foot indoor chambers and a 40-foot flight cage, where birds on the mend can build up their endurance as they prepare for release.

Watne said the recovery center is supported almost entirely by private donations and hundreds of unpaid hours by about a dozen volunteers and dedicated veterinarians.

“If there isn’t money there to pay the bills, Bob and I pay them,” she said. “We’re obviously not going to turn the electricity off. Luckily, the last couple years, I’d say we’re breaking even.”

While raptors tend to be the higher-profile patients at Wild Wings, the center is willing to take in any birds, from eagles and falcons to peacocks, geese, ducks and recently a Chinese pheasant.

Watne said they have taken in birds from across Montana — even as far away as Luther, a small town more than 400 miles southeast of Kalispell. The center cared for nearly 200 birds in 2015.

Although on vacation in Arizona, Watne said she has remained in contact with the staff, getting regular updates on the recovery of the two bald eagles.

“That, I think, is the worst injury I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been doing rehab since the mid-’80s,” she said. “I’ve seen scrapes and punctures, but nothing like that facial wound. I’ve never seen one that bad from another bird.”

Crow has heard of similar instances in which bald eagles became entangled after a battle, but this is the first time he has seen them alive.

For Gillan, it was an unlikely stroke of luck that either of the birds survived the brutal fight.

“Definitely, if they would have landed 20 feet in any other direction, away from the house, they would have died,” she said. “No one would have noticed them, and they were not letting go.”

Online:

For more information about Montana Wild Wings Recovery, go to www.wildwingsrecovery.org

Reporter Sam Wilson can be reached at 758-4407 or by email at swilson@dailyinterlake.com.