Sisters help perpetuate species

Russian River's flamboyant fund-raisers aid SF Zoo's hatching program for threatened eaglets

Monday, April 25, 2005

COURTESY PHOTO Sister Sparkle Plenty helped raise funds for the eaglets' sound system. Zoom Photo

Three baby bald eagles now nestling under their mothers' wings at San Francisco Zoo bear the unlikely names of Sister Sparkle Plenty, Sister Barbi Mitzvah and Sister Carmelita Cheesecake.

The eaglets were named for members of the Russian River Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a group of men and women who dress in outrageous female costumes to raise money for charitable causes.

The Sisters donated $350 for a first-of-its-kind sound system that enhances eaglet survival by piping the cries of parent eagles to eggs in incubators at the zoo's captive-breeding program, which raises eaglets and releases them to the wild.

Their modest donation provided what the zoo's faltering budget could not: It allowed animal keepers to test a technique that has worked well with other bird species, but had never been tried with bald eagles. The zoo is now poised to send copies of its eagle CD to other captive-breeding programs.

"I'm very happy about it," said animal keeper Kathy Hobson, who manages the zoo's bald eagle program. "It's definitely making it better for the chicks. I haven't lost anyone in the process of hatching this year."

The Sisters seem almost as happy as Hobson and have put a video and pictures of the tiny, fluffy, big-footed eaglets on their Web site.

"You look at this little piece of life that's been given a chance and it feels great," said a Freestone resident who would identify himself only as Sister Sparkle Plenty. "We feel like we're making a difference."

San Francisco Zoo, with seven pairs of bald eagles, houses the nation's largest captive bald eagle breeding program. The program began in 1985 to halt the decline of wild bald eagles, whose young could not survive in DDT-weakened eggshells.

The state bald eagle population had plummeted to 30 breeding pairs by the late 1970s, down from the estimated historic level of 400 breeding pairs. The birds are recovering and now number nearly 200 breeding pairs, according to the state Department of Fish and Game. The are federally protected as a threatened species.

San Francisco's bald eagles are housed in the Avian Conservation Center, where Hobson and volunteers remove the eggs from the parental nests as soon as they are laid.

The eggs are placed in incubators, where the heartbeat of the developing embryos is continuously monitored and temperature and humidity are held constant. Volunteers turn the eggs several times every day.

The aim is a higher rate of hatching than would occur naturally in the parental nest. "In the eagle's nest, it's very hard to know and help if something is not going OK," Hobson said.

But last year, the first year the zoo had used an incubator instead of mother hens, many of the chicks didn't hatch. Hobson and the volunteers worried, but weren't sure what had happened.

"You'd open the shell and there were these perfectly formed babies," said volunteer Susan Magrino, president of a Burlingame software company. "I wondered why they didn't have the oomph to come out of the shell."

The answer came to Magrino in what she calls "a magical moment" as she watched Hobson whistle to an egg and heard the egg chirp back. The hatching eaglets wanted to hear their mother's voice.

"If you were a baby eagle and you heard your mother, you'd want to come out of the shell," Magrino said. "Why would you come out if there's no one there to feed you?"

Hobson worked on the incubator, and Magrino - on the advice of a Monte Rio friend - applied for a grant from the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.

Last year, Magrino's vice president, Priscilla Joyce, and her husband, Jerry Joyce, recorded the chirps of babies and the raucous screams of the adults at an eagle's nest at the zoo.

Earlier this year, as nesting time rolled around, Jerry Joyce wired the incubators so a CD of the nesting eagles could be played directly to the eggs.

The technique has worked well with other species but apparently has never been used with bald eagles, Hobson said.

The results were immediate.

Eaglets still in their shells began chirping in response to the recorded parental cries. Twelve eaglets pecked and slept and pecked and slept until they made it out of the shell - typically a 30-hour process, Hobson said. Three more eggs are expected to hatch next week.

One of the babies was named "Little Jerry" in recognition of Joyce's help.

"You can see the difference," Hobson said. "They're alert, they're calm, they know their parents are there. They know they're not going out into nothing."

Hobson said she'll be sharing the eagles' CD with other bald eagle breeding programs around the country. "If I'd had this last year when my chicks were dying, we might have saved more of them," she said.

The Sisters have started a trust fund for the eaglets on their Web site, http://www.rrsisters.org/, and are considering a special fund-raiser for the breeding program in the coming year.

"We realized it was a wonderful opportunity to do something for our environment and a vanishing species," Plenty said.

The 12 members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence raised $70,000 last year and donated it to 52 charities. Working as volunteers at other charitable events, they helped raise an additional $212,000, Plenty said.