Francesca D’Appolonia was alone last Thursday evening waiting for her parents to join her at their shorefront home when she decided to check out the picturesque water. What she found was more than just a scenic view of Lake Erie.

“The water was perfectly clear and so still I thought, ‘The water looks lovely, let me go down and check it out,'” D’Appolonia said in a phone interview. “When I did, there was something floating in the water, where I quickly discovered it was an eagle.”

D’Appolonia said she wasn’t sure whether the young eagle was alive because it was floating in the water. She said based on the looks of the eagle’s wing, she knew it was injured.

“His right wing was tucked in, and his left wing was extended and it clearly looked messed up,” she said. “I initially called an exterminator in town and they told me to contact the DEC.”

Tim O’Day is pictured last Thursday climbing back up the cliff he scaled down to rescue a juvenile bald eagle that was injured and floating in the waters of Lake Erie. The juvenile bald eagle is believed to have sustained injuries from another eagle as a result of a territorial dispute. Submitted Photo

D’Appolonia then searched the internet for local DEC agents and began leaving voicemails. She said her mother advised her to contact a neighbor, Steve Rudnicki, who might have an idea about what to do.

“Steve gave me a description of a house to go to — no name, no address — of someone else who might help,” D’Appolonia said. “I got in my car and followed these kind of vague directions and knocked on a door.”

After getting no response at the house, she came back and checked on the eagle and found that it was still there. Upon returning, she received a call from Tim O’Day, director and founder of the Campbell Environmental Center in Erie County.

“Tim O’Day returned my phone call. I explained what was happening and we were deciding if it was a fledgling or if it was actually really hurt and if it was worth it to come down because he was in Erie,” she said. “I emailed him some photos of the eagle and he said, ‘Yes, this eagle is in trouble. Let me come down there.'”

D’Appolonia said she discovered the eagle around 5 p.m. and O’Day arrived around 7:30. It was hours of “rushing around” and trying to figure out what to do, she said.

“When Tim arrived, my neighbor … and his wife came as well,” D’Appolonia said. “So there was a team of us here.”

D’Appolonia said accessing the water where the eagle was located proved difficult.

“You have to climb down roughly 20 or 30 feet of shale rock,” she said. “It’s not an easy access to get to it. So, I showed him how to climb down the rock.”

“I’m no spring chicken,” O’Day added. “Making the climb down that cliff was no easy ordeal. Francesca was the one who showed me how she got down there.”

After D’Appolonia’s tutorial, O’Day picked up the bird and restrained it so it wouldn’t hurt him. After coming back to shore, it became evident that climbing up the shale rock with an aggressive predatory bird would be no easy ordeal.

O’Day said it was a “group effort” to rescue the eagle. The strategy he had in mind initially to rescue the bird was replaced with the strategy by Rudnicki of using a pet carrier and rope to lower the case and retrieve it once the bird was placed inside.

“Steve’s wife went to go get the (vet carrier) case, and I went to the house to get a rope,” D’Appolonia said. “We attached the rope to the carrier, lowered it down, Tim put the eagle into the carrier, we raised the carrier back up and Tim very bravely climbed up the shale rock and then took it away to an incubator for the evening.”

“It was one of the more fun rescues, and I’ve been doing this for 40 years,” O’Day said. “I drove 60 miles in the evening, had to climb down a 40-foot cliff, swim in the lake to get the bird, pull it back up in a crate, get back here (Campbell Environmental Center), put it intensive care, run fluids on it, remove some of the parasites on it and drive another 40 miles to a vet that’s qualified to treat it. It was quite an effort.”

O’Day said the eagle had numerous parasites on it. With an injured wing, numerous parasites and water-logged feathers in dropping temperatures, it’s very likely the bird would have died without intervention, he added.

“This is about their diligence in finding a bird that was floating in the water — which is unusual,” O’Day said. “If she didn’t take the steps she took, the bird would be dead. It’s as simple as that.”

The area where the eagle was found is a major migratory route for various birds. O’Day believes that the injuries the eagle sustained were the result of a conflict between it and another eagle. O’Day noted, according to statistics from Cornell, the eagle population has increased, and territorial disputes like this are bound to happen in larger numbers.

“We think it was forced into the cliff edge, where it broke its wing when it was being chased by other eagles,” O’Day said.

The last O’Day heard from DEC officials working in coordination with the medical attention is that surgery was successfully completed on its injured wing.

D’Appolonia said she went to great lengths to rescue the eagle because they have always been a constant in her vacations to Westfield.

“I’ve been coming up here since I was a baby,” she said. “The eagles are a big part of it. They nest along the coast here so we always see them, and after decades of seeing these eagles it’s still amazing. Seeing one injured in the water was a call to action. I can’t not try.”

D’Appolonia said throughout the whole ordeal there was a lot adrenaline. At the end of the day she was “exhausted.” D’Appolonia said if someone comes across an injured animal, use the resources available if you want to take the steps to rescue it.

“I would say to proceed with caution. If you’re not an expert, I wouldn’t go up to the animal,” she said. “Just use your resources. We’re lucky that we live in the age of the internet. All it took was a Google search.”