Return to Heaven by Tina Morris – Review

A moving memoir by one of the first women ever to lead a raptor recovery project.

There was a time, not so long ago, when bald eagles were extremely rare, especially in the lower 48 states, dropping from approximately 400,000 birds in the 1800s to just 417 nesting pairs by the 1950s. The fact is, by in 1970, most Americans had never seen a bald eagle in the wild. However, as the US bicentennial approached, a group of people decided to change that by returning this iconic national bird to its rightful place in the nation’s skies.

This memoir begins with author Tina Morris’s unconventional zookeeper job interview at the Louisville Zoo, where she overcomes her fear of snakes because she was more afraid to admit it to the Chief Curator, who was interviewing her, than to hold a snake. Her ruse was successful; she finds the job and soon learns valuable lessons about captivity and human cruelty from the zoo’s two elephants, Mary and Laura, both former circus elephants. Already fond of birds, her fascination and love for birds, especially birds of prey, grows. One day, Mrs. Morris asks the Chief Curator why the zoo had no raptors in their collection.

“They don’t make good show animals – super boring in captivity,” replied The Head Curator. “They are wonderful to watch when they are wild, flying, chasing prey in the air or grabbing it on the ground, but put them in a cage and their vitality disappears. It’s almost depressing to watch them sit there knowing they can’t shoot anymore.” (p. 14)

This motivated the author to study the falcon, first by reading about it in the zoo’s library, then a year later she went to Cornell, where she worked with ornithologist Tom Cade. Dr Cade founded the Peregrine Fund at Cornell University in 1970 to breed endangered peregrine falcons in captivity and release them into the wild, using a process known as “hacking”. This program was exactly what Dr Morris was looking for. After working with Dr Cade and learning how to reintroduce captive-bred falcons, Dr Morris, now a graduate student at Cornell, was chosen in 1974 to adapt her skills to rehabilitating bald eagles to restore the Coast’s population. East that had disappeared. from human persecution, habitat destruction and DDT. Despite her enthusiasm and hands-on experience with falcons, Dr Morris soon found herself in uncharted territory with little supervision as she worked alone on a project of historic significance, doing what no one else had done before.

Her first foster pair of bald eagle chicks arrived in 1976, after being removed from their wild parents’ nest in Wisconsin.

“In six months, I would find myself on a hilltop with sole custody of two bald eagles whose future survival was in my hands,” Dr Morris writes in her book. “It was a journey to get to this point and the pressure to ensure the survival of the birds was paramount. All the missteps and wrong decisions I had made along the way fell to the bottom, no longer important or relevant. I was here now and I had been given the opportunity to restore the bald eagle to its rightful place in our northeastern skies.” (p. 29.)

At the time, no one knew if young eagles could learn to hunt or indeed if they could even survive without their bird parents to teach and guide them, so it was Dr Morris’s job to find out. Upon their arrival, the ten-week-old bald eagle chicks from Wisconsin, designated W1 and W2, were placed atop a man-made nest that rises 35 feet above a 10,000-acre expanse of marsh, swamp, and stream in the National Refuge. of Montezuma Wildlife. located at the north end of Cayahoga Lake, east of Seneca Falls in New York. Historically, this site had been home to an active bald eagle nesting site until 1959, so it looked promising.

After her new charges arrived, Dr. Morris camped alone near the artificial nest and spent her days cleaning up roadkill or catching carp. She stabbed these carcasses with a barbeque fork attached to a long stick and used that tool to distribute food to the eagles in the nest. The eagle’s chickens tore them apart. Day by day they got stronger. And day by day, Dr Morris’s knowledge and confidence in her abilities also grew.

After the eaglets fledged, Dr Morris was asked again the following year to raise and release another batch of bald eagle chicks. But this was more challenging because there were five of them to take care of this time. Two of these eaglets were third nestlings in their nests—individuals that might not have survived had they not been sheltered—while the other two were siblings bred in captivity from a breeding facility in Patuxent. Later, a fifth bald eagle chick arrived from Minnesota after it was discovered in its nest with a broken leg.

Despite their various problems, all the young eagles successfully escaped and left, but in their absence, Dr Morris was unmoored, desolate. One day, her despair was interrupted by a meeting with the chiefs of the Six Nations Confederacy of the Iroquois to honor her efforts to bring back the bald eagle. They brought her into the tribe and named her, “She who feeds.”

But Dr Morris’s biggest surprise and triumph was yet to come, decades later. The last eagle bird to arrive, known as M3, had not only successfully recovered from his broken leg, but he went on to survive on his own. In the wild, he found a female to mate with, a nest to adopt, and had found a second mate to become the most prolific and longest-lived bald eagle in known history. M3 lived 35 years and fathered about 70 chicks. But no one knew who he was until after he was hit and killed by a car as he jumped on the road killer, still wearing the leg band bearing the number, 03142.

“If he and his second mate were able to produce an average of two eggs a year, hatch both, and see the young live to breeding age, he might be highly regarded by the eagles that we see in the skies of New York and the surrounding states today,” thought Dr Morris (p. 166).

One aspect of this book that I found most surprising is that I had no idea about Dr Morris or her important work, despite knowing some of the people she worked with and being an avid reader of conservation books. birds. This realization made me wonder how many other bird conservation and research stories I am not aware of?

However, Back to the sky (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2024: Amazon US / Amazon UK) is a quick and inspiring story read. It’s proof that a determined person can still make a difference. At a time when the mass extinction of bird species is a very important global topic, Dr Morris reminds us that humans can still be effective stewards of the natural world.

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