Yep if someone brings in or tells DNR about dead eagle, owl,or a hawk they might investigate a bit further. Could be it goes to a lab or a veterinarian hospital for an X-ray. Lead shows up plain as day if bird got shot . If ingested, be there in the gizzard, on X-rays. Any lead level in the blood is not safe. They'll no longer be able to keep er between the navigational beacons. Throws off their compass. Eagles don't chew their meat , so they can't spit out a BB , they gulp it down and the gizzard turns it into flight hours.
Looks to me like they endanger themselves. Starving your kin to death. And then it was said to be DDT as a killer in the 70s to eagles. Keep believing the lead is killing the mass of Eagles & condors or whatnot. As stated from the article
:
During the early 1970s, the
bald eagle population experienced a steep decline due to DDT's widespread use.
Seeing juvenile and immature eagles during the 1970s was a rare event. This was because the components of DDT interfered with female bald eagles' ability to produce eggs with thick-enough shells.
Most nests failed because the
eggs would easily break with just the gentle weight of an incubating adult. Very few juveniles were produced every year.
In what is now a successful conservation story, the Bald Eagle has regained numbers and continues to recover to the point that it is now fairly common in certain areas.
Bald eagles are now seen near bodies of water and sitting on utility posts and other places.
The first eaglet is fed the first day after hatching and quickly develops a size advantage over the second and third eaglet. During the first 2 and a half weeks, the male brings food for both the female and the chicks.
During the first days after hatching, the female tears tiny pieces of what the male brings to feed the young eagles. As the eaglets grow, both parents tear bigger pieces of food.
By the 4th week, both parents begin to forage for food and bring about the same amount of food to the nest. As the chicks grow older, the female appears to bring more food to the nest than the male.
At about the 7th week, the chicks begin to tear pieces of the fish the parents bring to
the nest.
Field observations of adult bald eagles feeding three 4-week-old eaglets recorded dismal differences in the amount of food each eaglet gets. An adult eagle brought a large fish to the nest and fed the largest eaglet 67% of the fish, while the second eaglet received 18.9 % and the third eaglet 13.7%.
In another nest, with three baby eagles, the differences were even more dramatic. The largest eaglet received 96% of the fish, while the second-largest eaglet received 2.5%, and the third chick only received 1.2% of the fish. In this last nest, the smallest eaglet eventually died from starvation.
