Liftoff: Pittsburgh young bald eagles take 1st flights

Photographers on the Three Rivers Heritage Trail and watchers of a live webcam report that the three young Pittsburgh Hays bald eagles successfully took some of their first flights this weekend.

The first young eagle fledged on June 6 and returned to the nest the following day. The other two eagles left the nest over the weekend, according to PixCams, a Murrysville company that sponsors the webcam with the Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania.

The Hays couple, the first pair of bald eagles to nest within the city limits of Pittsburgh in at least 150 years, has completed their ninth year of nesting on the same steep hillside above the Monongahela River.

“We are thrilled that all three eaglets fledged successfully,” said Bill Powers, owner of PixCams. “We have not had such a successful nesting season since our first year of streaming this pair in 2013-14,” he said.

Rachel Handel, Audubon spokeswoman, explained, “In the past few days, all of the eaglets have been seen exercising their wings and branching — moving out of the nest and up, higher into the tree.”

This past weekend, photographers gathered on the Three Rivers Heritage Trail expecting the remaining two eagles to fledge. Since the young birds will stay in the area for a few months to mature and get fed by their parents, they will continue to visit the nest.

All three birds were making short flights in the area, according to photographers. The youngest of the three, known as H15 (the 15th eaglet from the Hays pair since they began nesting), made its maiden flight on Saturday.

One of the photographers on the scene was Annette Devinney of Monroeville. She and others lined the Three Rivers Heritage Trail with their cameras trained on the nest, waiting to see any member of the eagle family.

Devinney saw H15 emerge from the nest. “He surprised us all, no one saw him coming,” she said on her Facebook page. “He just did a 16-second flight and I yelled ‘JUVIE UP!,’ my favorite two words, and it was over. Everyone got pictures, so many more to look for.”

Since their first flights this weekend, the young eagles will practice flying and catching their own food in preparation for that “last” flight out of the nest area, Handel said.

“Bald eagles, when they are learning to fly, have longer flight feathers than adults. These feathers serve as ‘training wheels’ that make it easier to fly,” Handel noted.

Once the three eaglets leave the nest for the final time, they will not return, she said. The nest is in their parents’ territory and the parents will chase them away.