A crew of eagle-eyed harbor patrol officers who rescued a stranded bald eagle from an icy stretch of the Hudson River said the big bird was practically begging them for help.
“It was crying, yelping,” Officer Michael Russo, who has been with the NYPD’s Harbor Unit since 2010, said Wednesday. “You could see it was in distress,”
Russo was on a training exercise with several other officers, navigating some ice patches near the George Washington Bridge, when they spotted a large bird perched on an ice floe.
Upon closer inspection, the crew members realized they were looking at an American bald eagle, the bird of prey recognized around the world as the national symbol of the United States.
This eagle seemed a little less majestic than the one on the presidential seal or the $1 bill. Squawking desperately for help, it sounded more like a seagull.
“It didn’t fly away, so we had to figure out how we were going to rescue this animal,” Murphy said. “We couldn’t just leave it. We put a plan together.”
While one officer slipped a catch pole over the bird’s head, Sgt. Mike Amello covered the eagle from behind to limit its stress.
“Just from the start we couldn’t tell what it was, but as we got closer we could tell it was in distress,” Amello said. “We could see it was bleeding in a few different areas. It was making a pretty distressing noise.”
The officers were concerned about the eagle’s beak and its sharp talons. But they were never in any real danger.
“It didn’t put up much of a fight, like it wanted to be saved,” Amello said. “Officer Russo was able to control the talons and I got a blanket over its head, which we found out was a way to calm birds down.”
Not bad for Amello’s first rescue.
The four-man crew called officers from the state Department of Environmental Conservation about the injured fowl, but they weren’t sure they had enough time to wait for them to arrive. The bird was struggling to stay afloat.
“They were great,” Amello said of DEC, “but we had to do something on the scene. There’s no planning for that. There’s no training for that. You just have to rely on each other and put something together.”
Officer Patrick Memi, who was piloting the boat, said they had to be careful not to knock the eagle off the ice.
“We had to use a lot of finesse because it’s a jet boat,” he said. “It displaces a lot of water. I didn’t want to displace the water and knock the bird into the water. Then it would be an entirely different rescue.”
Officer Nick Martin, who was the training officer, said they haven’t given the bird a name yet.
The eagle was taken to an animal sanctuary in New Jersey for treatment.
The officers said they had a lot of respect for the eagle. The crew did everything but salute.
“I mean that’s the bald eagle,” Amello said. “That’s freedom right there. You got to do something about that.”
