Send this story Print this story

Adjust text size

Bald eagle visits Menlo

by Dave Boyce

A large bald eagle named Sequoia has been tree-sitting in unincorporated Menlo Park near the North Fair Oaks neighborhood since at least Saturday, Feb. 23.

The female eagle is tame and normally lives in the Palo Alto Junior Museum and Zoo, Menlo Park Police Department spokeswoman Nicole Acker told the Almanac.

Zoo staff are monitoring Sequoia's activity and waiting for her to get hungry enough to come to her handlers and get fed, Ms. Acker said, adding that the police department is not involved.

The handlers use whistles to convey instructions to the bird, photographer Jim Vanides said in an email. He had observed and photographed the bird on Sunday around 5 p.m.

Mr. Vanides, a Menlo Park resident, said he spotted the eagle in the pine trees along the Dumbarton railroad spur line near the Suburban Park area of Menlo Park.

North Fair Oaks resident Scott Peterson told the Almanac that he'd been out in his backyard on Saturday around 4 p.m. and had seen a large bird soaring a couple of hundred feet above some redwood trees. "I noticed it because it was so large," he said.

Mr. Peterson told this reporter that he'd been unaware that he might have been looking at an eagle. "That was a huge, huge bird," he said, "the biggest bird I've seen in 30 years of living here."