A bald eagle in St. Louis County whose unusual dedication to parenting gained national attention has died. The World Bird Sanctuary announced Tuesday that Murphy the bald eagle was found deceased in his aviary over the weekend. He was 33 years old.
In 2023, Murphy’s behavior attracted viral attention and crowds of visitors to his enclosure where he had built a nest on the ground.
But instead of an egg, Murphy was incubating a rock.
Eventually, the sanctuary introduced Murphy to an injured eaglet, and he became a real foster dad. Murphy went on to raise a second eaglet, who is still in the sanctuary’s care.
In a Tuesday Facebook post, the sanctuary called Murphy an “extraordinary foster dad” who delighted thousands who watched him raise the eaglets. In a 2023 interview on St. Louis on the Air, Roger Holloway, the sanctuary’s executive director, called Murphy’s unlikely path to parenthood “a wonderful coincidence.”
“We all know here that the best possible parenting for any baby bird of prey is its own kind,” he said. “So when you have an eagle in nesting mode, that's a good time to try and see if they will make a suitable surrogate parent.”
Murphy died after a head injury. The sanctuary said its workers found him deceased on Saturday while checking on animals in the wake of the storms and tornadoes that hammered the region. The sanctuary said the storms “may have contributed to his passing.”
Murphy leaves behind numerous fans, the eagles he raised, and the rock he so faithfully cared for.
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