What Do Eagles Eat

Bald Eagle Soars to Freedom on July 4th

"Einstein," an adult bald eagle, is now soaring over America after his release July 4th from the University of Missouri's Raptor Rehabilitation Project , where the once-ailing bird underwent treatment.

The bald eagle is the national bird of the U.S., serving as an important symbol for the country's strength, wisdom, and freedom. It is even front and center on the seal of the President of the United States.

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Einstein may be oblivious to all of the Independence Day pomp and circumstance, but his caretakers recognize how important it is to see healthy eagles flying free, particularly on this important holiday.

"When I realized that his release could be around July 4, I knew I had to do it," Elizabeth Groth, president of the Raptor Rehabilitation Project, told Discovery News before Monday's event. "He is ready to go and I thought it would be cool to try to get the public involved a bit for this release. It's not every day that a member of the public gets to see an eagle like this and on our nation's birthday, I thought it would be fitting."

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Groth, who is also a student at the university (class of 2013), explained that Einstein was brought to her and her colleagues by a Missouri Department of Conservation agent in April. He was in terrible shape, due to lead poisoning.

"This is usually a cumulative process over the life of the eagle," she said, adding that people often think such birds are shot, but that's not always true. "They eat fish that have eaten lead sinkers or have been exposed to lead, and eventually the lead builds up in the eagle's body to the point where they start showing neurologic signs."

In this case, the signs included disorientation, listlessness, inability to stand, uncoordinated movements and, perhaps most disturbing of all, he was also discharging a foul-smelling liquid from his mouth and nose. Groth and her team knew that this was consistent with a condition known as gastrointestinal stasis , which "involves food rotting in the bird's digestive tract rather than being digested completely."

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The bird, later named after German physicist Albert Einstein , required "a lot of supportive nutritional care when he got to us," Groth said. "He was very thin and couldn't handle solid food, so he was on basically a liquid carnivore diet for about the first week. After that first week, he started to act more normal and was able to stand on his own again. He also started showing the defensive and aggressive behavior that we tend to expect from an eagle.

Will Eagles Weakside Linebacker Ernie Sims Continue To Eat The ...

When NFL offensive coordinators draw up plays, many times they design them to entice defensive players with a fake one way, then they’ll run the play to the other side.  The success of these plays are predicated on the gullibility of the defensive players.

These plays are designed like mouse traps where some cheese dangled in the trap to lure would be suckers.  Eagles new linebacker Ernie Sims is known for his speed and aggressiveness, but he’s also known for his gullibility.  In other words, Sims is known eating the cheese.

The book on him is that he can be influenced to move out of position.  He’s outstanding when it’s a matter of him using his speed and aggressiveness to attack a play right at him or run somebody down from behind, but he struggles with misdirection plays.

The Packers know Sims because they played against him twice a year when he was in Detroit.  They know you can sucker him to the strong side by faking a strongside run then bringing quarterback Aaron Rodgers back to the weakside on bootleg plays with tight end Jermichael Finley running a drag route across the field.

Hopefully Sims has been schooled by his coaches on how to avoid eating the cheese.   The former Lion says he’s been studying the Packers and has a good feel for what they do.  He believes he’ll be able to avoid being influenced to move out of position.

The former Lion should continue to be aggressive but he’s got to recognize the warning signs when team are trying to bait him to move out of position.

Most of the time the offensive linemen give away the play and he will be able to see this, if he studies their stances.  Once the big guys get tired during a game, they could careless whether they’re giving away the upcoming play.  They’re sucking air and focusing on doing their jobs.

Sims will play a key role for the Birds defense because he and middle linebacker Stewart Bradley stay on the field during nickel plays.  He’s got to make some big plays for the Birds by either causing some fumbles with big hits, picking off passes or sacking quarterbacks.

He’s got to play smarter than he was in Detroit, where he was able to snag only one interception and garner only two quarterback sacks in four years of play.  Sims must be more productive here and that will start by not eating the cheese.

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Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, August 1-4, 1998, University of Wisconsin-Madison