Tina Morris was 26 years old when she spent months living alone beside an artificial nest at New York’s Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge. Her job was to raise young bald eagles and see whether they could survive after being released into the wild. The experiment began in 1976, when the species was still struggling after decades of persecution, habitat loss and the effects of DDT. Morris was a graduate student at Cornell’s Laboratory of Ornithology when she was selected for the project. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says she eventually spent two years working with seven eaglets at Montezuma, near Seneca Falls, New York.The young eagles lived in a man-made nest about 35 feet above the ground, while Morris stayed nearby and watched them from a concealed position. She did not have a lot of experience caring for eagles and was also afraid of heights. Each day, she climbed the tower to provide food without allowing the birds to become dependent on human contact. The goal was to use a technique known as hacking, in which young birds are raised in a controlled setting before being released to live independently. The method had been used with other raptors, but applying it to bald eagles was still an experiment.
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The eagles had to learn to live without peopleMorris could not simply feed the eaglets by hand because regular contact with people could lead to imprinting. The young birds needed to develop normal associations with their own species rather than treating humans as a source of food. Morris therefore stayed out of sight and used a long stick to place food inside the artificial nest. She collected roadkill when available and caught carp, then attached a barbecue fork to the end of the stick. The setup allowed her to feed the birds without standing directly beside them. She also spent time observing their behavior and recording how they responded to the nest, food and surrounding environment. Once the eaglets began leaving the tower, her work shifted to tracking them and checking where they landed.The first two eaglets arrived from Wisconsin in June 1976. They were identified as W1 and W2 and became the first birds in Morris’s care at the artificial nesting site. A third eagle, M3, arrived later after being found in Michigan with a broken leg. His injury had already been treated before he joined the group. M3 had experienced contact with people, unlike the first two birds, but he had not become imprinted on humans. Morris later recalled that she became particularly attached to him during the rehabilitation effort. The three birds gave her an opportunity to observe how young bald eagles behaved as they developed outside a conventional nest and prepared for their first flights.The transition from the tower to the surrounding refuge required close monitoring. Young eagles do not immediately have the flight control needed for long distances or safe landings, so Morris followed their movements after they left the nest. Some landed in places where they could not easily return to the tower. One bird ended up in a marsh and had to be carried back. Morris also had to search for birds that disappeared from view and check on them after difficult landings. Much of the work involved routine tasks rather than dramatic moments: preparing food, climbing the tower, watching the birds, recording their behavior and searching the refuge when an eaglet could no longer be seen. Those daily observations became an important part of the hands-on work behind the project.What made M3 so special?The first group eventually left the area as independent birds. Morris returned to the project in 1977, when she helped raise another four eaglets. By then, the basic approach had proved workable, and other researchers became involved. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation later took over the program.M3’s story continued even after Morris’s time at Montezuma ended. The eagle was identified by his band number, 03142, and eventually settled in New York. He lived for about 35 years and fathered an estimated 70 offspring, according to accounts of Morris’s research and memoir. Morris did not initially know that the eagle was M3; she sadly learned his identity after the bird was killed by a vehicle while feeding on roadkill.The figure of 70 should be treated as an estimate rather than a precise count. It refers to chicks that are attributed to M3 during his life, not to 70 descendants across multiple generations. His story nevertheless gave Morris an unusually direct link to the long-term results of the experiment she had worked on as a young biologist.
Bald eagle | Wikimedia Commons
A species once down to 417 nesting pairsThe bald eagle’s situation in the United States was far more serious when Morris began her work. In 1963, only 417 known nesting pairs remained in the lower 48 states, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. DDT was a major factor, which accumulated through the food chain and interfered with the birds’ ability to produce strong eggshells. Habitat loss, shooting and other pressures had also reduced populations.The species eventually made a major recovery. In 2007, the Fish and Wildlife Service removed the bald eagle from the federal endangered and threatened species list after determining that populations in the lower 48 had recovered. The agency estimated 9,789 breeding pairs at the time. A later federal estimate based on 2018-2019 data put the population at about 316,700 individual bald eagles, including 71,467 breeding pairs.Laws protecting eagles, the U.S. ban on DDT, habitat protection and other conservation programs all played major roles. But the work at Montezuma helped establish a practical method for releasing young bald eagles into areas where the species had disappeared. Nearly five decades later, the experiment is preserved not only in conservation records but also in the story of M3, one of the eaglets Morris once watched from a hidden position beside a 35-foot nest.