One eaglet has died, another recovering after rescue from cell tower in Bradenton

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For months, Kathy Deviow kept her eyes on an eagle's nest atop a cell tower in Manatee County.

Monday night, she noticed something wrong with her Eagle family. The nest, which houses two eaglets, was empty.

"They are just fascinating animals. They are beautiful. They are huge," she said.

One was hanging upside down from the tower off of Cortez Road and 66th Street. It's claw was caught in a clamp. The other just watched.

"I knew he had to be stressed, worn out, exhausted and hurting," she said.

Nobody knew how long the eaglet was stuck in the clamp, but every time it tried to break free it continued to injure itself.

"Every time it would start rattling it's wings and moving around, I would just gasp. I was having a fit because I wanted somebody to get up there and get the baby," Deviow said.

She called for help, and Ed Straight of Wildlife Inc. showed up.

"We knew that getting somebody up there, especially with the darkness and the bad weather coming in, was going to be a challenge," Straight said.

The cell tower company sent two of it's employees out. They geared up and began a climb nearly 300 feet up.

"There were times that it was stressful. We were on the ground looking at this poor bird hanging up there very high in the sky," said Straight.

With the eaglet's mother and father circling above - clearly concerned for their babies - rescuers were able to free the trapped bird. The second eaglet, still to young to fly, got frightened and tried to fly off, but crash landed about half a mile away.

It did not suffer any serious injuries, but its sibling had a broken bone and cuts from being stuck on the tower. It was sent to Busch Gardens to recover, but it had to be euthanized because of its injuries.


The bird's sibling is being treated at a rehab center in Maintland and is learning to fly and catch fish. The goal is to reunite the eaglet  with its parents that continue to wait at the nest.