Cell phone tower worker, wildlife volunteers help eagle family after fishing line gets tangled in their nest
HUDSON, Fla. - A cell tower company employee got a bird’s eye view Tuesday as he scaled a tower in Pasco County trying to save two eaglets and their parents.
Kat Westfall, a volunteer with EagleWatch, which works with the Audubon Society, noticed a fishing line in a nest she’d monitored for a few years.
"The sun was glinting off of something flying. The eagles were fascinated by it. They were watching it," she explained. "I couldn’t see because the filament was so thin and when I looked at my pictures, I realized, ‘Oh my God. There’s something up there,’ and I texted Kim right away to say, ‘Hey we’ve got a problem.'"
Kim Rexroat is the coordinator of EagleWatch in Pasco and Hernando counties, and a volunteer with the Raptor Center of Tampa Bay. She said they worked with state and federal wildlife officials – along with the owner of the tower – to get a permit and make sure they can safely approach the eagle's nest.
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"Those eaglets could’ve been tethered to the nest," Rexroat said. "They could’ve had fishing line wrapped around their feet where it cut off circulation. They could’ve lost a toe and the eagles rely on their feet to hunt. It could’ve been horrible."
An employee with the cell tower company climbed to the top of the tower as the eaglets’ parents circled and watched closely.
"It was a huge, huge humanitarian effort. Because of this big effort today, the lives of four bald eagles were saved," Rexroat said. "He pulled all of this filament line out of the nest and he searched for any hooks. At first, we thought the eaglets were entangled, and he looked at them closely. They were fine."
Photo credit: Kim Rexroat
There were some of the eaglets’ downy feathers they had shed caught in the fishing line.
"The gentleman that went up on the tower when he was up on the tower he basically said, ‘I thought they’d be afraid of me but one of them put his head back like he wanted to be fed,’ and he thought that was so neat that he was able to see that," Westfall said.
Westfall said the timing was everything.
"We had to do this now. They’re at the right age that you don’t want to disrupt an eagle’s nest because you don’t know what the adults are going to do when you disrupt them," Westfall said. "We went into their territory. We went into their nest. We fussed around up there. We were with the eaglets and these are their babies, and they couldn’t protect them and so, they were very nervous and very upset."
"So, what we try to do is keep that down to a minimum," she added, "and do it at certain periods of time. This age is really good because you don’t want a later period of time when the adults may abandon the little ones – or the little ones get so freaked out that they flap and fall out of the nest."
Photo credit: Kim Rexroat
Westfall and Rexroat watched the nest the rest of the day to make sure the parents stayed with their babies. They said there’s a lesson in all of this.
"We just ask that fishermen, anyone, when they discard their line to please dispose of it properly. Don’t cut your line. Just dispose of the line properly," Rexroat said.
FOX 13 reached out to the employee of the cell tower company for further comment.