James Farkas watched proudly on Thanksgiving Monday as the eagle that he saved in May was prepared to be released in Nanaimo.
“Wow look at him,” said the Nanaimo resident.
“Oh he’s got life.”
When you consider the wild way the eagle was found, that’s saying something. At a north Nanaimo cliff in May, the same one that Farkas had fallen from and had to be rescued from himself eight months earlier, the eagle was found.
“I took a step off there and fell all the way to the bottom down there,” Farkas said looking down the steep cliff.
He returned to the cliff after recovering, still with pins in his leg, only to look out that day and see a dying eagle being attacked on the beach. So he jumped, or hobbled in a hurry, into action.
“And for Thanksgiving Day I get to say thank-you to everybody that helped for this to happen,” said Farkas to the wildlife rescuers who picked up the animal after five months of rehabilitation at OWL Rehab in Delta, B.C.
The Nanaimo man is one of the hundreds of BC residents who have saved eagles they found dying and injured in 2019.
It was a record year for Mountainaire Avian Rescue in Merville where 63 eagles were rescued by them alone after poisonings and near starvations.
But now with spawning salmon filling rivers, releases are taking place up and down the coast, reuniting eagles that were near death just a few months ago with families in the wild that they’ve left behind.
“As soon as he’s in the sky, it’s very easy for him to tell that he’s home,” said Anderson.
“And you know, knows where to go looking for the wife.”
Skye Ryan
