An odd eagle coincidence ~ January 11, 2006

David Heiller

This story could fall into the what-are-the-odds category.

Two eagles that were found dead in two different locations were banded on the same day On May 20, 1991.

Brenda and Martin Pohlman, who live on a farm in section 26 of Crooked Creek township, found one on October 16.

A banded eagle

The other was found on November 8 by a trapper near Prairie Island.

It is unusual to find a dead eagle to begin with, and more rare to find one that is banded. About 30.000 bald eagles have been handed over the past 50 years, and only about 15 percent of the bands have been recovered. So to find two eagles, 20 days apart, that were banded on the same day. I4 years earlier, well, Brenda and the trapper should have gone out and bought lottery tickets.

The story, which I first read about in the La Crosse Tribune intrigued me. I called Brenda Pohlman, and she agreed, “It’s very odd.”

She, Marty, and her parents, Maurice and Jenny Waege from Wilton, WI, were cutting firewood that Tuesday afternoon. Marty spotted the bird from his tractor seat. Brenda identified it as an eagle from its talons and beak. The bird was in bad shape, and Brenda couldn’t see its white head. “We don’t know how long it was lying out there before we took it to town,” Brenda said.

She called the Minnesota DNR office in Caledonia, and they referred her to Tony Batya, a operations specialist with the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge in Winona.

Batya said to bring it to the Caledonia DNR office. Brenda had left the carcass in the woods because she knew she wasn’t supposed to touch it. “It’s actually a federal offense to touch it whether dead or alive or take any feathers,” she said.

It turns out that the birds were banded by Dave Evans of Duluth, who was working for the Wisconsin DNR. One eaglet was in a nest 96 feet high in an ash tree near Alma, WI. The other was in a nest 83 feet high between Cochrane and Fountain City, WI.

Brenda doesn’t know what killed her eagle. She said it could have been lead poisoning. The birds have been known to die from ingesting lead sinkers in fish that they eat

Eagles mature in five years, and live 20-25 years in the wild, so the 14 year-old birds could have had quite a bit of life left.

Malika captured this photo in Houston County

One thing is for sure: Eagles are way more common now than when I was a kid, We can thank DDT for their awful decline. Back in the 1960s, an eagle flying over the Brownsville hill was enough to get the entire neighborhood including all the Levendoski kids, out on the sidewalk craning their necks and shielding then eyes for the occasion.

Now they are a fairly frequent sight, although no less welcome. Consider this; in 1972, there was only one known bald eagle nest in the 260 mile-long Refuge. Now there are 167.

There is also an eagle nest on the Pohlmar property. Brenda is guessing it was used by the eagle she found. It will be interesting to see what happens at the nest this spring, she said.

The Pohlmans see eagles flying around all the time, Brenda added. Lately she’s seen one adult and three juveniles.

It’s very enjoyable to watch them in the nest. She’s seen them pull fish out of nearby Crook Creek too, and eating dead raccoons.