It was a beautiful day to fly; the air was still and undisturbed beneath scalloped clouds.
H97-99 rattled in the carry box. He was home: He could smell it; he wanted out. The moment the gate was lifted he hobbled onto the grass in that awkward way of great birds when aground, mightily annoyed. He wasted no time, he was up into the pearl sky beating toward the gray line of Port Deposit across the river, then turning sharply west. Within 15 seconds he was out of sight.
How disappointing. There had been little time to regard the bald eagle's flight. Out on Roberts Island, where it had been found about a month ago by duck hunters, and all over the 3,000 acres of Susquehanna State Park, rabbits and rats and snakes quaked in their lairs. Their fate passes silently above. He is a shadow in the trees; he is a black stain on the water.
For a second he appeared again, far away, like an apostrophe in the sky. But was that really him? One can't be certain: Winter has purged the russet Valley of the Susquehanna of its strong color, recast it in the industrial tones of steel and carbon and ash. The river of January is a slate streak.
This bird with the white head and white tail feathers signaling his maturity has a good chance of surviving after his release last month. That's the judgment of Steven J. Sarro, curator of birds at the Baltimore Zoo, where H97-99 had been a guest since Dec. 18, recuperating from some unknown trauma.
He is one of many that have been brought into the zoo's Eagle Rehabilitation Center, repaired and released. His designation, H97-99, means he was housed in the hospital, received in 1997 and was the 99th injured animal brought to the zoo for rehabilitation that year. Work done here, and in places like this all across the country has helped repopulate many wild areas with this emblematic bird. H97-99 is the first eagle sent back into the wild this year from the Baltimore Zoo.
He's an adult male bald eagle, which is to say he's older than 4 years old. He weighs about 11 pounds, which indicates his gender: Male bald eagles are smaller than females, though both sexes are identically colored.
He can hunt; he knows the areas to avoid around here, the places where the osprey nest and lay in wait. (Less than two years ago President Clinton released a recovered eagle over the Chesapeake Bay in a Fourth of July ceremony. The bird was attacked and downed by ospreys and had to go back to the hospital. It didn't know the territory.)
