PARIS – A wild bird that many mistook for a young bald eagle held up traffic at the Handy Store bridge on Wednesday as police and concerned onlookers waited for an animal rehabilitator to come to the scene.
The commotion began around 11:30 a.m. when Norway resident Dick Cushman was passing over the bridge with his wife, Lynne.
“We just drove by and he was sitting on the side of the road flopping about,” Cushman said. He pulled over, wrapped the bird in his jacket, helped move it onto the bridge’s walkway, then called the police.
A small crowd, which had gathered quickly, looked on as the bird sat hunched awkwardly next to a sucker fish it probably had captured from the Little Androscoggin River. The white feathers on the bird’s head were slightly speckled with brown; the rest of its feathers were brown.
In about 20 minutes, veterinarian Matthew Holden of the Oxford Hills Veterinary Hospital arrived with technician Melissa York. Wearing leather gloves and gently placing a towel around the bird, the pair picked it up to be taken back to the hospital.
Although the crowd had speculated that the creature was a bald eagle, Holden said it was most likely an osprey, which also ranges across many coastal and freshwater parts of Maine, as eagles do. Ospreys also are called fish hawks. Both are large predators: Bald eagles have a wingspan of 6 to 8 feet, according to www.eagles.org/moreabout.html, while ospreys have wingspans of 4 to 6 feet, according to postmorrow.org/OspreyFund/ospreys.htm.
“I think he’s weak,” Holden said, noting that the bird felt thin in his hands. “I think he probably got ahold of this fish and couldn’t handle it.”
Holden is licensed by the state to rehabilitate wild animals. He said the bird would likely be released back near the bridge if he recovers, because that could be his territory.
Cushman was delighted to help with the bird. He was among those in the crowd who’d assumed it was a bald eagle, speculation fueled by a story the Rev. Don Mayberry told at the First Congregational Church of South Paris on Sunday.
The minister chuckled when he found out his tale had spread. Reached by phone Wednesday, he told how he’d been walking near Pennesseewassee Lake in Norway on a warm, sunny day a few weeks ago when someone passing by in the car leaned out the window, pointed toward the sky and shouted, “Bald eagle! Look at the bald eagle!”
“I’m an optimistic guy,” Mayberry said, describing the way he looked up in hopes of seeing the bird.
When he saw no such thing, he remembered his own lack of hair. “I just sort of passed it off as someone picking on me,” Mayberry said.
But seconds later, he looked up again and saw an eagle circling over the lake.
The church was having a “Friends Sunday” and inviting others in. He used the story as an analogy about shouting out and “sharing something neat,” he said.
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