To be more clear, this has been happening for a long time, and the reason it happens is that most birds of prey, and especially Bald Eagles, scavenge carcasses.
Lead is the cheapest, most readily available form of ammunition. It’s also brittle, and shatters into multiple little particles once it makes contact with its target.
Sometimes hunters will field dress their prey (ie butchering the animal on the spot, taking the meat home, and leaving the rest for scavengers). This is great and natural, but if the hunter used lead ammunition, there will likely still be pieces of lead in the carcass. Also, sometimes the animal gets away with lead shot still in its body. I interned at the facility in the post above, and we would often get donations of roadkill for the sanctuary’s residents. Every piece of roadkill had to be x-rayed before we could cut it up to feed the birds. Sometimes there’d be a deer leg that still had lead in it, and that had to be thrown away. Even roadkill isn’t safe.
Lead is also used in fishing tackle, where it is sometimes swallowed by fish, or cut from lines and left to sink to the bottom where it can be mistaken as food by loons or diving ducks. Lead sinkers that have been swallowed by fish can also poison eagles.
Seed-eating birds such as turkeys, pheasants, quail, and mourning doves may also peck at and ingest spent shot, mistaking it for seed.
And it only takes a piece of lead smaller than a pea to kill a bird.
Lead stays in the system, so scavenging a few pieces here and there can build up to that “pea-size” fast. It travels up the food chain too; if an eagle eats a lead-poisoned duck, that eagle is now also poisoned.
Lead poisoning is not a pleasant death. The bird becomes lethargic and weak, and begin to lose weight as their appetite decreases. Sometimes they exhibit neurological issues. The eagle above went blind and was involuntarily vocalizing. They may develop a head tilt or become paralyzed in certain parts of their body. Eventually they will be unable to fly, then walk, then slip into a coma before they eventually die. It is a long and expensive treatment to save a lead-poisoned bird, and many of the lucky birds that make it to rehab, even if they’ve come in for some other reason, have at least some exposure to lead. If it’s just a small amount, or they’re only in the early stages of lead poisoning, they can usually be saved. If they’re too far gone, like the eagle in the post above unfortunately was, they often have to be euthanized before they suffer a worse death.
Sometimes these birds that rehabbers spent so much time (usually unpaid), effort, heartbreak, and money (usually donations) into saving are just going out there to eat more lead. The birds don’t know any better. They don’t know that their food has poison in it. The best thing we can do is to Stop. Putting. Lead. In. The. Environment.
If you hunt or fish, or you have friends or family that hunt or fish, switch to non-lead alternatives. Campaign for the full ban of lead ammunition and tackle. Spread the word on why this is so important, as many people see their right to lead as a right to choose, and don’t fully understand the impact of that choice.
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