Bald Eagle Eggs Doomed As Justice Returns To DC Nest

WASHINGTON, DC —Justice — the male bald eagle who has been missing in action since Feb. 9 — has returned to the DC eagle nest after his mate, Liberty, fled with another male, abandoning two doomed eggs. The Earth Conservation Corps, which operates the EagleCam.org live feed of the nest, said Wednesday afternoon that Justice was back.

The raptor was first sighted on video about 2:30 p.m. It's too late to save the two eggs that his 14-year mate, Liberty, laid earlier in the month. The female eagle left the nest with another male, dubbed M2, on Feb. 23.

“There’s no possible way those eggs would hatch at this point,” Tommy Lawrence of Earth Conservation Corps recently told WTOP. “They’ve been left in the cold for way too long, and so those eggs are gone for now.”

Typically Liberty has primary responsibility for incubating her eggs and caring for the chicks once they hatch, the ECC said. In past season it has been Justice's job to catch fish and bring them back to the nest for his mate and hatchlings. This year Liberty brought fish back to the nest and incubated the eggs during DC's mild winter until she inexplicably left.

A second male, nicknamed Aaron Burrd, arrived on the scene after Liberty and Justice had participated in mating rituals, ECC said. He tended to show up at night and ignored the eggs, but a second new male —M2 — was seen seeking Liberty's attention and she left with him on Saturday, Feb. 23.

The birds nest 110 feet above the Metropolitan Police Academy in Southeast D.C., and it is monitored 24/7 by the live Earth Conservation Corps Eagle Cam.

This bald eagle couple is a major success story for the District over the last couple of decades here. There were no bald eagle nests in D.C. for more than half a century until 1999, when bald eagles Monique and Tink established the first nest. Liberty and Justice arrived in 2005, and a third pair set up a nest at the National Arboretum in 2015.

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