Woman Was Stashing Away Roadkill Deer in Maine When Two Extremely Rare Creatures Showed Up
“This is mine.” This is what Lynne thought the bird was expressing when it fanned its wings to cover a deer carcass she had dumped in the backyard of her home in mid-coast Maine. Its wing tips looked smushed and a little bit frayed, which made it look like the bird was worried, injured, or just uncomfortable. Perhaps it was the ruckus of ravens and crows screeching nearby that made it feel insecure and scared. Is something wrong with it? Lynne was forced to wonder. She found herself jostling in the “protective mom mode.”
She needed to understand what the bird was doing and whether it was really a bald eagle or some other species. Rammed by a suite of bird-related dilemmas all of a sudden, she approached Maine’s birding communities and state biologists, eventually solving the mystery. Contrary to what she thought, the mysterious bird was a rare Golden Eagle and the behavior it was displaying wasn’t a gesture of insecurity or fear but rather an intelligent strategy to protect its food from predators and competitors lurking around.
Lynne is a photographer living on a family property in Lincoln County that spans hundreds of acres. Sometime around the autumn of 2025, Lynne partnered with her brother for a wildlife-documenting project. They set up dozens of trail cameras, 30 at a time, to monitor and record the birds passing by, their activities, movements, and tantrums. They even created a Facebook page called “Backyard Wildlife Maine."
The cameras recorded appearances of diverse guests, including antlerless deer, blue herons, indigo-colored blue jays, handsome bucks, pink-orange lizards, barred owls, turkey vultures, and more. On February 6, a new guest came. It began when Lynn was passing by a trail when she spotted the carcass of a roadkill deer. She picked up the mangled carcass and tossed it in her brand-new SUV. Driving more than a mile into the woods, she abandoned the carcass in a location that was under the surveillance of trail cameras, according to the account she shared with Bangor Daily News.
By dumping the carcass, she had expected to attract a pair of coyotes, as it was the time of their mating season. But what happened next was something she had least expected. Footage she shared on Facebook shows the chocolate-brown-colored bird straddling in the snow-covered yard, nibbling on the meaty, blood-splattered carcass.
The bird, however, appears insecure or frightened about something. Spreading out its large, majestic plumage, it seems to cloister the meal, probably from the birds whose brash caws can be heard in the video’s background. Lynne shared the recording with a local birding group, where it was confirmed that the bird was indeed a “Golden Eagle.” A short while after this appearance, a second golden eagle turned up, electrifying her curiosity.
In Maine, these Golden Eagles are listed as endangered, if not rare altogether. According to the Maine government, the last record of Golden Eagles nesting in Maine dates back to 1997, which had persisted for at least 70 years. The last individuals to be registered were a couple who failed to hatch eggs every year between 1985 and 1997.
Next came the moment to solve the mystery behind its freaky, unconfident behavior. A raptor biologist they knew told them that the behavior called "mantling" is actually a strategy that many birds use to shield their food from competitors or intruders. Intrigued, Lynne is now participating in a golden eagle study with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.
In the meantime, she will continue to bait the area for documenting more of these handsome, impressive feathered folk. To make things easier, she plans to add solar panels to the cameras so they can operate all day whilst conserving battery power.
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