This eagle was found on Camano Island and brought to us on Saturday morning. The presenter was not sure what was wrong with her - they thought maybe she had been hit by a car.
We did not see any signs of trauma, the eagle was dehydrated and depressed - and had a smelly crop. It was clearly young, likely born last year. We started fluid therapy and were quite surprised on Sunday morning by what was discovered in the cage. She had thrown up a used condom.
It is unclear whether it was somehow ingested by eating fish or if it was consumed as litter on the ground. Either way - she seems to be feeling a lot better today. Wildlife often die from swallowing plastic or other litter - we hope she will be one of the lucky ones and will fully recover.
UPDATE - In addition to the condom the young Bald eagle regurgitated yesterday, she just threw up more debris this afternoon.
This time it was lots of pieces of some kind of tape. It looks a lot like plastic packing tape and smells putrid. Again, no idea if this was inside of a fish or something she ate - but it seems odd for an eagle to select any of this as food on purpose.
Poor thing - we are doing all we can, but we are guarded about her prognosis. Status - died. The toxicity of the garbage combined with irritation to the GI track contributed to the death of this eagle. Our necropsy did not discover further debris in the digestive track, but we did discover that the eagle was a male.