Murphy the Eagle, Who Tried to Hatch a Rock, Becomes Stepdad for Stranded Eaglet | Living St. Louis

After 31 years at the World Bird Sanctuary, Murphy the bald eagle has finally become a father. Well, a foster father. Roger Holloway, the executive director and CFO of the World Bird Sanctuary, says Murphy's journey into fatherhood began when he showed a unique interest in a rock. Interest in the rock started back in March, earlier in March, which is the typical time of year for bald eagles and other birds of prey to be interested and active in nesting. It's just a very strong seasonal hormonal third where they want to incubate and care for something. That something was this small rock. Murphy created a nest and began incubating his rock egg. And while some eagles have done this in the past at the World Bird Sanctuary, Holloway says it's not common, especially for a single male eagle. Bald eagles will mate for life when things go well, but Murphy went through this with the rock without having a mate. Murphy's rock egg gained a lot of attention online, but what seemed like a quirky habit to their online fans became an asset to the World Bird Sanctuary when a young eaglet was in need of care. Bald eagle nests, the pair will add to them year after year, so they get really, really heavy, sometimes weakening or toppling the tree that they're built in, especially when high winds come along and you have that resistance of the big nest. So that's what happened in this case is the eagle nest and the tree fell down. Only one of the eaglets survived the fall and that's the one that's here. The eaglet, known as 23126, was brought to the sanctuary. Because of Murphy's strong nesting behavior, the team decided to switch out his rock baby with a real one. We already have foster parents here that are permanent residents. Red-shouldered hawk, barred owl, great horned owl, which are species that we regularly get as youngsters in our hospital. And those foster parents will raise those babies when they come in. Knowing that we had that success with those species, then we felt it best to try to do the fostering with a bald eagle parent, with this young chick that came in. Murphy's switch from the rock baby to a real eaglet made him a viral sensation. His story was featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and on CBS Sunday Morning. And so far, Murphy has been a great dad, which is a big deal. This is the first time the has been able to use a bald eagle as a foster parent. So it's a little risky because Murphy had never done it. We've never had it done with any of our permanent resident bald eagles where they raised a chick, but we felt it was time to try. Murphy and eaglet 23126 were moved to a private enclosure where they could bond without the interference of humans. There is a risk when birds of prey, even any bird, can habituate an imprint around people. Imprinting is when they really lose their self-identity and they think they're a person. So they have no fear of people and then usually a reduced ability to find food or look for food because they rely on people. This is important because the ultimate goal is to release 23126 back into the wild. This is also why the young bird doesn't have a name like Murphy. But this doesn't mean that Murphy will be done with fatherhood after the eaglet leaves. When it comes down to it, we're pretty sure we have a good surrogate parent for next season. And besides opening new opportunities for raising eaglets, Murphy's story has brought in new visitors, donors, and interest to the World Bird Sanctuary. Holloway says he hopes that Murphy's popularity brings more attention to the importance of the conservation of birds of prey. They do so much as natural controls for pests and without them we'd have a lot of problems with our food supply, with our buildings, our homes, our everything. He also wants people to be interested in the sanctuary beyond Murphy's viral story. You know, all things go well and we release this baby eagle and then we're back to our routine. Murphy's going to move back into this enclosure and then our mission moves on from there. So we want people to stay interested in it with our rehabilitation efforts, with our education efforts, with our conservation where we're trying to help endangered species and move forward with a mission that we really want to get everybody interested and involved in. For Living St. Louis, I'm Veronica Mohesky.