Yes, that’s a bald eagle on your Delta flight

It is a sound that literally turns heads, followed quickly by rapid-fire questions asked with increasing incredulity. Is that a bird? At the airport? Going on a plane?

The sound is exactly as it seems, as unbelievable as it is: On Friday, a bald eagle named Independence flew — commercially — to attend the nation’s 250th anniversary festivities Saturday at Independence Hall in Philadelphia.

The eagle, who goes by Indy, is herself an expert flyer, having recovered fully from the wing injury she sustained as a young bird. She’s now a resident at the Auburn University Raptor Center, an ambassador for its educational programming and one of the “War Eagles” who fly over the stadium before football games.

Indy is also an experienced commercial flyer, having traveled to Philadelphia multiple times to soar over the Eagles’ stadium before games.

“She’s racked up those SkyMiles,” said Amanda Sweeney, a trainer at the raptor center who has worked with Indy since the eagle arrived at Auburn in 2018.

Credit: Estela Muñoz/AJC

Credit: Estela Muñoz/AJC

The center rehabilitates several hundred injured birds of prey each year, the vast majority of which are released once they recover. Indy can never live in the wild again, having imprinted on humans at the Florida rehab facility that treated her wing injury. She was released only to be found later approaching humans on a golf course and begging for food, at which point she was entrusted to Auburn.

Indy settled quickly into life at the raptor center.

“One of the challenging things with these birds is that they have tremendous personalities, but I also don’t want to overly anthropomorphize them,” said Robyn Miller, the center’s director. “She has this sort of strong-willed and free-spirited attitude about her. It’s almost like she is aware she is the center of attention.”

Miller and others at the raptor center have worked for months to arrange Indy’s visit to Independence Hall. The United States’ semiquincentennial was too special an event to pass up, she said, the perfect opportunity to showcase the bald eagle, a national symbol and one of the country’s greatest conservation success stories.

Once teetering on the brink of extinction, the bald eagle population has risen and continues to rise after concerted efforts to protect their habitat and ban DDT, an insecticide that caused reproductive failure among eagles.

“We are there to celebrate not only our American pride, but also our shared responsibility to ensure that this country’s wildlife and wild places endure for generations to come,” Miller said. “We feel very humbled and honored to be included.”

Traveling with Indy is logistically complicated.

She flies with an entourage. Miller, Sweeney, trainer Katie Pnewski and veterinarian Dr. Amberly Sokoloff accompanied Indy this trip.

They all traveled lighter than Indy, who arrived at the airport with a checked bag that held her perch, a tarp, medical supplies and frozen mice — no carrion in the carry-on allowed. They also brought a bag full of earplugs for passengers on Indy’s flight. Bald eagles tend to be talkative birds, Miller said, and Indy is especially so.

Indy didn’t have to show a photo ID, but she went through security just like any other passenger. While Transportation Security Administration agents scanned her metal crate, Indy perched on Sweeney’s gloved arm and cawed loudly.

“Hi, birdy,” one agent told her as others walked from their posts to see the source of the noise. Another said they had never seen a big bird come through the airport like that.

“Well, you can check that off your list,” Pnewski said.

Indy drew crowds as they wheeled her crate through the airport. A two-time Auburn alumna chased her down, running after the bird and yelling, “Indy!” The woman, Ellie Morris, said she had seen on social media that Indy was traveling through Atlanta and detoured from her own terminal to catch a glimpse of the eagle.

Once at the gate, another woman said her bartender had told her to go find the bird, and so she followed the sound. Others flocked to the noise and drew close to her crate, bending down to get eye-level with the bird, who stared back. Indy’s feathers were loose and ruffled inside her crate, and she preened herself as onlookers watched, all signs, her handlers say, that the eagle was relaxed and happy.

Credit: Estela Muñoz/AJC

Credit: Estela Muñoz/AJC

Indy cawed when Delta Air Lines pilot Mike Cheri introduced himself, one flying professional to another. It’s too bad she can’t fly in the cockpit, he said.

She got a round of applause when Cheri introduced her to fellow passengers once on board, where she took up two seats.

“You might hear her,” Cheri warned as Indy began squawking, as if on cue.

“I studied up on a little bit of eagle,” he said. “What she’s saying is happy birthday, United States.”