Barr Lake – With spikes in his boots and a rope looped around a tree trunk, Gary Meinke edged his way straight up a 60-foot cottonwood.
His target at the crown above: baby bald eagles.
Nearly extinguished by pesticides that thinned their eggshells, bald eagles have made a comeback across the United States.
In the 1980s, the popular nest at Barr Lake State Park was the only one in the eastern half of Colorado.
There are now at least 60 nesting pairs in Colorado, and many more winter in refuges near prairie dog colonies.
Still, the symbol of America remains a bird protected by the Endangered Species Act.
At nesting sites like Barr Lake, dedicated volunteers still risk their necks each spring by pulling newborn eagles from treetop nests so their legs can be banded with state and federal tags.
Meinke reached the crown. He slithered toward the edge of an eagle nest, about five feet wide and weighing several hundred pounds, showering the ground below with twigs.
Above, the parents angrily wheeled around ack-ack-acking at the giant intruder.
“I got two looking at me. I can see three,” Meinke called down.
He reached in, snagged a bird, popped it into a canvas bag attached to a long rope. “Okay, eagle coming down,” he said, carefully lowering his cargo.
Raptor biologist Jerry Craig waited below.
In the early 1980s, Craig launched a bald eagle recovery program at the Colorado Division of Wildlife. He retired in 2004, but can’t resist returning to help with the yearly banding of the newborns.
Timing is critical. The eagles are banded at 6 to 8 weeks, after their legs are formed but before they can fly away.
On the ground, Craig went to work. Two baby eagles stood motionless, staring at the strangers with cameras. The third lay on the ground, acting dead.
Craig weighed each, measured their beaks and claws, examined their plumage. Mature bald eagles are blackish-brown and white; their offspring are a mottled brown.
He pronounced them all healthy. At less than eight weeks, each weighed close to 10 pounds.
Beak lengths help him determine sex. “If I were to guess,” he said after measuring each, “I’d say they’re all sisters.”
Craig took note of the prey remains gathered from their nest: mallard, pigeon, prairie dog and rabbit. Finally he snapped an aluminum band with a seven-digit U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service number on one leg of each eagle – “there’s your Social Security number,” he said – and a bright red state tag on the other.
Bald eagles may live 20 years or longer, and the federal number may not be seen again until they die.
But the state tag can be seen with a spotting scope, and bald eagles born at Barr Lake have been identified up and down the South Platte River at nesting sites near Greeley, Windsor and the Chatfield Reservoir.
Craig believes bald eagles are no longer endangered. But he hopes the state will continue to protect and monitor them for a while to ensure adequate habitat. Around Barr Lake State Park, he noted, new homes are popping up in every direction.
By now the monitoring is done mostly by volunteers who keep an eye on eagle nests statewide.
Meinke, a professional tree trimmer, fetches eagles free of charge. He also built – or at least started – the current bald eagle nest at Barr Lake.
Friday he put three young eagles back in the nest he built and rappelled swiftly down a rope to the ground. Now 49, he has been doing this for 12 years.
“It’s fun,” he said. “It’s a privilege to be sitting in an eagle’s nest – legally. How often do you get a chance to do that?”
Staff writer David Olinger can be reached at 303-820-1498 or at dolinger@denverpost.com.
