Up-close with Ouray and Montana!

Picture the last movie you saw that featured a bald eagle. It swoops effortlessly through the air, opens its mouth and you hear a majestic call. You’ve been fooled. The call you’ve heard a thousand times in movies is a red tailed hawk. An actual bald eagle call is loud and ear piercing, but it’s very different than what you think. Ouray, Cheyenne Mountain Zoo’s female bald eagle, will set you straight in the video below. 

Located in the Zoo’s Rocky Mountain Wild exhibit, our bald eagles’ habitat is just beyond the grizzly bear viewing area. The exhibit was designed so you can view multiple animals at once – eagles, grizzlies and trout.

Cheyenne Mountain Zoo has two bald eagles, Ouray and her mate, Montana. They were brought to our Zoo after severe wing injuries required partial wing amputations. The surgeries left them unable to fly, so they would never survive in the wild. Instead of room to soar, their exhibit is full of trees and perches they can jump between them. Their habitat also includes a water tub they like to bathe in and a large covered nest box to keep them warm on snowy days.

They aren’t the only bald eagles living in Colorado during the winter! Colorado is a popular wintering area for wild bald eagles. Eagles are only partially migratory. If they have access to open water, they will stay at one site year-round. If they do migrate, they will return to the same nest year after year with the same mate. In the spring, the female will lay one to three eggs, which will hatch after 35 days of incubation. The parenting duties are shared by both parents. Montana and Ouray have never had offspring, as their wing injuries make it very difficult to mate.

Rocky Mountain Wild animal keepers say Ouray and Montana are a great pair of bald eagles. They get fed once a day with a special bird-of-prey diet full of red meat, trout, chicken and the occasional rat. For enrichment, Ouray loves to catch her own trout out of her water tub. She also enjoys getting showers from the keepers. Montana loves to pull meat off large bones, which gives guests a glimpse at the strength of his beak.

Imperfect feathers of our bald eagles are often used for other animals’ enrichment. Our pallas cats enjoy some feathers in their meatballs.  They smell them, bat at them and even chew on them. When a pristine feather is shed, keepers contact the proper authorities to pass the feathers on to Native American Tribes, which are authorized to keep them. Personal ownership of bald eagle feathers is illegal. The Zoo is also authorized to keep feathers for educational purposes, but they are not removed from Zoo grounds.

Interested in learning even more about Ouray and Montana? Come see them in the grizzly viewing area!