By now I was gaining confidence as the young eaglet developed well. It was gaining weight at a constant rate and eating an ever increasing amount.
A routine developed of feeding weighing and recording as this eaglet blossomed before my eyes. My only early concern was the first sign of splayed legs. I immediately increased the paper tissue padding around the eaglet and this problem never developed.

I was torn between continuing the hand rearing and the knowledge of the advantage of using Maria’s now considerable experience as a foster mother.

I held out for eleven days before I handed him over to Maria’s care, in hind sight I should have done it sooner but in the long term it made little difference.

It is just that it took the two of them a day or two to adjust, Maria acted as though he was first hatched and he could not understand why she was feeding such small and delicate morsels. I topped him up whilst Maria adjusted and fast forwarded two weeks and started to feed bite sized chunks.