ST. MARIES, Idaho — More than three years after a poacher shot off her upper beak, a bald eagle named Beauty can finally live up to her name — with the help of volunteers.
A team attached an artificial beak to the 15-pound eagle in mid-May, improving her appearance and, more important, helping her grasp food.
“She’s got a grill,” joked Nate Calvin, the Boise engineer who spent 200 hours designing the complex beak.
The “grill” was some metal exposed when a bit of the synthetic beak broke off during application. But the new beak is only a temporary fix, designed to nail down precise measurements.
A final beak made of tougher material will be created and attached later, though her saviors don’t plan to release her back into the wild. They say that she has spent too much time with humans and that the final beak will not be strong enough to tear flesh from her prey.
But getting this artificial beak was key to Beauty’s survival. A wild eagle that must be hand-fed by humans would eventually have to be euthanized, especially because her life span could run four more decades, said Jane Fink Cantwell, who took Beauty to her raptor recovery center in Idaho two years ago.
Two weeks after the beak was applied, “Beauty continues to do very well and we remain guardedly optimistic for her future,” Cantwell said in an e-mail Friday.
