Yesterday we placed this youngster to be adopted in a new nest over in Dunedin, FL.  Congrats to this team effort of clinic staff, Audubon EagleWatch staff, Audubon EagleWatch volunteers and our volunteer tree climber to get this bird safely in a new nest back in the wild.

Here's what MyFoxTampaBay.com had to say:

There's a brand new baby eaglet in the Bay Area, but this one didn't get here the old-fashioned way. The 16-day-old chick was orphaned when the dead tree holding its nest in Osceola County fell.

Attempts to reunite it with its parents didn't work out. The Audubon Birds of Prey Center has been caring for the eaglet, which gained nearly 28 ounces in the two weeks it was there. Their search for adoptive parents led them to Dunedin and Arno Becken's backyard. He knew there was an eagle nest on the property when he bought it last fall.

"That was one of the selling factors for the property, that the eagles were nesting here," he said. Becken says many of his neighbors in the Lakewood Estates neighborhood have been watching the same pair of eagles for nearly five years. Every year they return to the nest, lay eggs and rear their young. It's quite a treat for his next door neighbors, who didn't know about the eagles when they rented their house. Marcia and Tim Mathison can simply open their back door and watch nature in action.

“It's just unbelievable. It's like you're really there, you're not watching it on television. You are really there." For a successful adoption, Audubon needed a nest with eaglets about the same age as their orphan. Pinellas eagle watchers estimate this nest hatched around February 3rd. To be sure it's a match, tree climber Jim Lott, went up 40 feet to take a look, and a picture, of the two eaglets in the nest.

Audubon Eagle Watch Coordinator, Lynda White, kept her fingers crossed. "We need to have babies that are very close in size and age to this one or it just won't work. Sibling rival and that sort of thing." The chicks looked to be about four days younger. White decides that's close enough and puts the orphan in a duffel bag for its ride up the ropes to the nest. "Mom" and "Dad" didn't like it one bit. But White says there's no doubt that they'll return. "They'll fly off. They'll circle. They'll scream. They'll carry on. But without fail, within a few minutes, maybe half an hour, they're back on the nest."

Lott carefully placed the eaglet in the nest alongside its two new siblings. He's done this many times before, and I asked him how it felt to give Mother Nature a hand. "Good. I feel good that someone was able to find it, that someone was able to take care of it, and bring it out there safely so we could put it up there." White is certain that the eagle parents will treat the new eaglet as one of their own. She says they've done this before, and their success rate is 100 percent.

"We have never had one reject a foster chick. They're such good parents. "I have no doubt it's going to work." Local Eagle Watch volunteers have nicknamed the newcomer, "Hoover," because he or she got "adopted" on President's Day and President Hubert Hoover was orphaned at the age of ten and adopted by an uncle.

Find out more about Audubon's Eagle Watch program.

Read the story at TampaBay.com and MyFoxTampaBay.com.