I went out to a local ranch on Monday to pick up a downed golden eagle. Matt said he'd seen the bird the day before but it was moving. He said he had some hamburger thawed and would it be okay to give it to the bird. I told him that hamburger is NEVER okay to give to a raptor, they can't handle the suet in it. He said how about a steak, I said okay.

When I got there this amazing baby eagle was beside the drive not moving but had finished off the t-bone steak. I gathered him up, was aghast at the hundreds of lice crawling all over him and realized that the bird was also severely starved. I brought him home, gave him fluids but he started having seizures and died.

Had I known how thin he was I would have told Matt not to feed him as his body was so unused to food it was shutting down. Similar to what happens with an anorexic person, their system cannot handle much food of any kind.

Matt showed me the nest, a very poorly built one in a huge evergreen tree. He also said the same thing happened to last years chick. We now know that starting in April of next year we will be monitoring the nest a few times a week so this doesn't happen again.