A week after their introduction, the cage was removed so the two could interact more closely. Soon, Murphy began to respond to the eaglet’s peeps. “And he was taking such good care of his rock that we decided that he would be our best bet.” “He was already showing the hormonal aspects of raising a chick,' Griffard tells the Post. The eaglet was rescued after falling out of its nest during a storm. They removed the “rock baby” and put the eaglet, protected by a cage, into the enclosure with Murphy. To see if Murphy could safely act as a surrogate, a few days after the eaglet’s arrival, keepers began a bonding process between the two birds. The World Bird Sanctuary realized that this could be Murphy’s big chance. Genevieve, Missouri: A young eaglet had fallen from its nest during a storm and needed somewhere to stay. Thanks to a spring hormonal surge, Murphy initially focused his parenting powers on a rock.

Keepers at the sanctuary assumed that Murphy’s fatherhood fantasy would pass with the season and he would move on from his rock. Murphy became so aggressive in protecting his nest that he had to be moved to a separate enclosure. “As it progressed along, he became more and more dedicated to his rock,” Roger Holloway, executive director of the sanctuary, says to Danny Wicentowski of St. Murphy, a bald eagle at the World Bird Sanctuary, was focusing his fatherhood skills on a rock he thought was an egg until an orphaned eaglet needed a parent. Murphy was experiencing a spring hormonal surge compelling him to brood, despite not having an egg of his own, which can lead birds to care for egg-like objects, Griffard tells Livia Albeck-Ripka of the New York Times.

Only one thing stood in the way: His careful brooding and nurturing was being spent on a lifeless rock. “We’ve never had a bird at the sanctuary protect a nest like that, so viciously,” Dawn Griffard, CEO of World Bird Sanctuary, tells the Washington Post’s Praveena Somasundaram. As time went on, he became more and more protective of his offspring, screeching and charging at anyone who tried to come near. He crafted his nest carefully in the bottom of his enclosure, his home for most of his 31 years of life since an injury left him unable to fly. In early March, a bald eagle named Murphy, a resident of the World Bird Sanctuary in Valley Park, Missouri, was ready to become a father.

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