An Eagle Who Adopted a Rock Becomes a Real Dad

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Last edited Thu Apr 20, 2023, 08:32 AM - Edit history (1)

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/17/us/murphy-bald-eagle-rock.html

An Eagle Who Adopted a Rock Becomes a Real Dad

Murphy, a bald eagle at a bird sanctuary in Valley Park, Mo., had been incubating a rock, and his keepers did not have the heart to separate them. He seemed ready when an eaglet needed a dad.



Murphy, a bald eagle that had been showing fatherly instincts, has been sharing an enclosure with an eaglet that survived a fall from a tree during a storm in Ste. Genevieve, Mo.Credit...World Bird Sanctuary
Livia Albeck-Ripka

By Livia Albeck-Ripka
April 17, 2023

Murphy the bald eagle waited day after day in his modest, yet carefully built nest for his one egg to hatch, but his keepers did not have the heart to break the news to him: The 31-year-old flightless bachelor was sitting on a rock.

A usually mild-tempered bird, Murphy gently rotated his rock, less shaped like an egg than a small meteorite, as though to incubate it. He lay in the one spot all day, rising to squawk and charge at the other birds that dared to come near his nest at the World Bird Sanctuary in Valley Park, Mo.

A sign on the eagles’ enclosure attempted to abate visitors’ concern, noting that Murphy was “not hurt, sick, or otherwise in distress.” The sanctuary, acknowledging the bird’s behaviors, wished him the best of luck.

Perhaps it was fate, then, when an orphaned eaglet, just a week or two old, was brought into the sanctuary this month, having survived a fall from a tree during a storm in Ste. Genevieve, Mo., about 60 miles southeast. In a way, Murphy was the “obvious choice” for a foster parent, Dawn Griffard, the chief executive of the sanctuary, said in a phone interview.

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