Feisty Tri-Cities raptor advocate dubbed the ‘Eagle Lady’ by a Florida governor has died
Doris Mager, who became a Tri-Cities celebrity as “The Eagle Lady” in her 90s, has died. She was 98.
She suffered a heart attack and died Nov. 16.
The Connecticut native moved to the Tri-Cities in 2015 from Florida by way of North Carolina to be closer to her son and daughter-in-law, Bill and Peggy Mager.
She was already an East Coast sensation for her work to educate the public about birds of prey, often accompanied by one or more of the birds in her collection.
So when she moved, she didn’t move alone.
‘The Eagle Lady’
Her crew included E.T., a rescued great horned owl who featured prominently in hundreds of appearances to encourage respect for raptors — eagles, hawks, owls, falcons and other birds of prey.
Mager was a stalwart of the Florida Audubon Society and founder of her own nonprofit, Save Our American Raptors (SOAR) long before she landed in the Tri-Cities.
She was dubbed “The Eagle Lady” by former Florida Gov. Bob Graham.
She’d celebrated her 60th birthday with a 2,800-mile cross country bike ride to raise money and awareness for raptor causes.
Graham referred to her as “Florida’s Eagle Lady” in public remarks honoring her in Tallahassee. The name stuck, even after she moved to Asheville, N.C., and eventually, in her 10th decade, to the Tri-Cities.
Fertile ground
She and E.T. along with her other rescued raptors enthralled young and old alike in their new community.
The Mid-Columbia Libraries booked her and E.T. for presentations at all its branches. Local schools opened their doors and she was a regular guest at Wild Birds Unlimited, the Richland store dedicated to supporting avian wildlife.
Mager, E.T. and her screech owl were always popular, said owner David Goss.
“She was so full of energy. It’s hard to describe someone that has that much positivity and that much joy. She was indomitable,” Goss said. “I’m going to miss her.”
Her store visits halted during COVID but Goss hoped Mager would come back someday.
In a 2016, Mager told the Tri-City Herald she loved teaching children about the powerful creatures she’d vowed to protect.
She asked the newspaper to stress that it is illegal to collect raptors and illegal to shoot them. It repeated the message in a feature tied to her appearance at the West Richland library.
Three years later, Mager and E.T. hit the road for one last cross-country trek, from Washington state to her native Connecticut.
E.T.: Extra Terrific
The mission was bittersweet. Mager, then 93, was moving E.T., then 36, to the Denison Pequotsepos Nature Center at Mystic to live out his days.
The Westerly Sun newspaper covered the hand off, noting that Mager wore an eagle pendant around her neck, sandals on her feet and a purple T-shirt from the Badlands of South Dakota.
E.T. has since died, said Marge Woods, a close family friend who described Mager as a mother figure.
E.T.’s story was as remarkable as Mager’s.
He came to her as small ball of gray fuzz. Wildlife officials had rescued him from a collector thought to have plucked him from a nest in the Florida Everglades.
The tiny creature had imprinted on humans and couldn’t be released back into the wild. Mager agreed to take him on.
Biologists named him “E.T.” for “Extra Terrestrial.” Mager preferred “Extra Terrific.”
Her first rescue
Her raptor career dated to 1963, when she was managing a store for the Audubon Society when someone brought in an injured red-tailed hawk, which she nursed back to health and then set free.
Later, she took on a bald eagle that had been shot through the wing. Hallie would never fly again and like E.T., spent decades with Mager, thrilling audiences.
In 1979, she spent a week in an inactive eagle’s nest near Maitland, Fla., to draw attention to the then-declining bald eagle population and the plight of injured raptors that couldn’t be released back to the wild.
The Audubon Center for Birds of Prey, according to a 2019 retrospective by Audubon Magazine.
Memorial services are pending.
