Game Commission hopes plastic bag in nest won’t harm Hays bald eagles

The male Pittsburgh Hays bald eagle brought an unusual, and potentially dangerous, object to the family aerie earlier this week: a black plastic bag.

An official with the Pennsylvania Game Commission said Friday she hopes the plastic bag won’t wrap around an adult’s leg or one of the two young chicks currently in the nest.

As the plastic bag has become a common piece of litter — New York state just banned single use plastic bags — it has become more common in the environment, common enough, apparently, for a bald eagle to find it.

Live webcam watchers were horrified this week watching the Pittsburgh Hays webcam: “I hope and pray no harm comes to our little eaglets and parents with this plastic in the nest,” wrote Sandy Goad on the Facebook page of CSE Corp., which runs a live webcam on the Hays nest along with the Audubon society of Western Pennsylvania.

“Lord, set a gust of wind to send it sailing away,” she concluded.

In a post on their Facebook page, Audubon noted that the plastic bag had printed instructions to “recycle” the bag.

Bald eagles are not known to use plastic bags to line their nests, according to Patricia Barber, an endangered species biologist with the Pennsylvania Game Commission.

“Red-tailed hawks will bring in a snake skin that has been shed for its nest,” she said.

But plastic bags? Barber searched the literature and didn’t find any references for a bald eagle using such material.

The plastic is flexible like their bigger, softer grasses, which the birds bring to line the bowl of the nest, she noted.

“Hopefully, it will get compressed and be another piece of the nest,” she said.

“But, if it wraps around a bird’s leg or around a chick — that hopefully won’t happen,” she said.

Eagles should not be coming into contact with plastics, Barber said, as “it is not natural and shouldn’t be added to the threats that they are already exposed to daily.”