At age 74, the eagle lady is still soaring.

Doris Mager of Clyde has been tirelessly working for the conservation and preservation of American raptors (birds of prey) for more than 35 years. Mager’s avian addiction began innocently enough. In the early 60’s, she worked in the Florida Audubon Society’s store in Maitland. She said customers would come in and ask her what the little brown birds outside were. She didn’t know, but thought she should.
She began to learn from the Audubon Society ornithologist and soon she was hooked. In 1963, an injured red-tailed hawk was brought to Audubon headquarters in Maitland. Doris nursed the bird back to health and released it.

Word quickly spread, and injured raptors began appearing at the headquarters by the score. Doris tried to accommodate the flood of raptors from her home but was quickly overrun. She said she would have as many as seven eagles in her backyard at the same time.

Officials at the FAS decided to build an aviary to use for education and to house the injured raptors. In 1979, with the facility nearly completed, funding was $8,000 short. To raise the needed money, Mager lived in an eagle’s nest, in Oviedo, Fla., for seven days and six nights.

“We raised the money and more,” Mager said, “but the nest is no longer there. A four-lane came through and now a toll booth sits where the nest used to be.”

But the aviary is there. After $2 million in renovations and redevelopment, the Audubon National Center for Birds of Prey is scheduled to reopen this fall. Since 1979, the center has treated over 8,000 raptors, including more than 225 bald eagles. After nearly 20 years with FAS, Mager left and founded her own non-profit organization in 1983. Save Our American Raptors (SOAR) was created to teach children about the fate of American raptors. Mager crisscrosses the country in her van presenting programs at schools, wildlife centers, pow-wows and other venues. While most of her attention is focused on children, she also does presentations for local Audubon chapters and other civic organizations.

All the birds Mager works with are non-releasable. Some have injuries that prohibit their return to the wild, and others were born in captivity, have imprinted on humans, and could not fend for themselves in the wild. Some of the birds Mager uses in her programs include: Cara, a 25-year-old captive bred crested caracara; E.T., a 20-year-old great horned owl; Atsa Yazhi (Navajo for littlest eagle), a bald eagle with one wing amputated because of a gunshot wound; and Digger, a 6-inch tall burrowing owl. Mager also has a new addition to her teaching family — Missi, a Mississippi kite.

Mager’s work on behalf of raptors has been acclaimed by many national and local organizations including several Audubon chapters, The Nature Conservancy, Tennessee Valley Authority, the Sierra Club and many others. She was selected as Conservation Educator of the Year by the National Wildlife Federation some years ago.

Although Mager has scaled back somewhat from the 200 programs she used to do yearly, she still does more than 100. She and her birds travel by van from Cape Cod to Savannah, Ga., to Gallup, N.M., and many points between. Local venues include Waynesville Middle School and Highlands, where this year she will visit the school, the Bird Barn and the Nature Center. She has put over 20,000 miles on her van since January 2001. At this point, she intends to “go till God gives me the sign.”

Much of Mager’s tenure as “eagle lady” is recorded in the book RJ: Tribute to a Golden Eagle published in 1997 by Aquilla Press in Clyde.

For more information regarding SOAR write to: SOAR, 132 Autumn Lane, Clyde, N.C., 28721.

Preserving

 

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