An occasional bald eagle becomes a patient at Morning Star Wildlife Rehabilitation Center near Gravette. This year, there are three.
Lynn Sciumbato is caring for three bald eagles at the rehab center she's operated for 31 years. One eagle was found injured near Gentry, another near Mountain Home and a third around Russellville. All are adult bald eagles.
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Donations to help fund the care of injured animals at Morning Star Wildlife Rehabilitation Center are welome.
Mail checks to the center at 13844 N. Mount Olive Road, Gravette, Ark., 72736.
The federally licensed wildlife care giver is optimistic two of the three will one day be released. The eagle from Russellville won't likely recover from its wing injury.
T he Gentry eagle is Sciumbato's most recent patient. She and David Treat, an Arkansas Game and Fish Commission wildlife officer, managed to catch the hurt eagle in November. It's no easy task capturing a bird with talons sharp as sewing needles and strong enough to crush prey.
"You just have to get them boxed in and grab them," Sciumbato said. She wears leather gloves that go clear to her shoulders.
"It's a lot of trial and error" learning to catch them. "But the errors are so glaring," she said.
It's hoped the Gentry eagle will fly free again someday if a head injury heals. Sciumbato will treat the eagle for three months or more before before she'll know if it can be released.
A veterinarian in Mountain Home did surgery on the wing of that eagle before it was transported to Morning Star Wildlife Rehabilitation Center. She hopes that eagle will eventually be set free.
Right now, the eagle isn't flying well, Sciumbato said. Two of the three eagles are in a flight cage that allows birds to fly limited distances and land on branches inside the cage. It's about 30 yards long and 15 feet high and made mostly of wooden slats.
The two eagles share the cage with a black vulture that's recuperating. An owl flies back and forth is another flight-cage enclosure.
The three eagles are fed dead rodents that Sciumbato buys online.
Lead poisoning can be an issue with bald eagles that she treats. If an eagle is hit by a car, it could be that lead affected the raptor's ability to fly, she said.
Eagles may ingest lead from deer gut piles that are left in the woods after hunters field dress the animals. Some swallow lead sinkers in fish they eat or in game birds that have been shot with lead. Steel shot is required for all waterfowl hunting. Lead shot isn't legal.
Sciumbato is well known for the programs she presents at state parks, schools and elsewhere around the region using live birds under her care. The owls, hawks and a turkey vulture in her shows aren't releasable. Some seem to relish their new role as "education" birds, comfortable in front of a crowd while perched on Sciumbato's arm.
If it's determine that any of the three eagles can't be released, they won't become part of Sciumbato's programs by law. Sciumbato is federally licensed to care for bald eagles and another federal permit is required to show them.
If an eagle can't be set free, Sciumbato tries to place it in a suitable aviary for wild birds.
"Some Indian tribes have nice aviaries for nonreleasable eagles," she said. "Bald eagles molt every year and tribes can use their feathers."
Bald eagles were removed from the federal endangered species list in 2007 but are protected by the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. Violating the act comes with a $5,000 fine and a year in jail for the first offense.
Bald eagles are welcomed visitors at Beaver Lake, smaller lakes and open country around Northwest Arkansas. Each January, the Army Corps of Engineers takes a count of the number of bald eagles at Beaver Lake. The number is added to a data base with eagle counts from around the nation.
Landon Thurman, a Corps ranger at Beaver, said the count will be done this year and in future winters even though bald eagles are no longer an endangered species.
Sports on 12/18/2018