Alex and Wendy Santantonio live on a riverbank in Maryland and are used to seeing large objects like driftwood floating by.
But one day they see something that demands their immediate attention.
Alex recognizes the object through his binoculars
Alex describes the experience to The Dodo:
„I was walking past the windows overlooking the water and happened to see something floating along. So I took our binoculars and saw that it was an osprey.“
At first, Alex assumes that the bird is fishing. But then he notices that the osprey’s wings are sticking out at strange angles. Alex reacts immediately and calls for his wife.
„We ran outside“,
alex reports:
„Our kayaks were already down by the water because we’d been out the day before. The water isn’t very deep there, so we didn’t even put on our life jackets, we just jumped in.“
Animal rescuers in action
While Alex’s wife Wendy rescues the eagle, Alex films the action. They both quickly realize that it is a young bird. Wendy carefully tries to lift it onto her paddle, as she explains:
„Little by little, we got him to stand on the paddle.“
And further:
„Once we got close to him, I slid my paddle under him and he held on with his talons long enough for me to set him down on a rock, then he climbed up onto a higher rock to recover.“
Osprey won’t fly away, then the miracle happens
The couple don’t let the bird out of their sight, as Alex does in a video he posts on Instagram. The osprey sits on the rocks for about an hour, drying its feathers.
But it makes no attempt to fly away. So Alex and Wendy shoo it off the rocks and are amazed. As soon as the youngster is in the air, its mother suddenly flies in out of nowhere.
She makes sure that the still disoriented osprey finds its way safely back to its nest, where it crash-lands. Alex describes the incredible sight:
„Seeing the mother osprey come and accompany him was the coolest thing to witness.“
