HE WHO MUST BE NAMED

The band America sang about “A Horse With No Name” in 1972, but now there’s a majestic bird in Eugene without one. And he/she needs your help with a new moniker.

For now, the new bald eagle at Cascades Raptor Center off Fox Hollow Road in the south Eugene hills goes by “One Who Needs a Name,” executive director Louise Shimmel said Tuesday.

After being found injured in the Midwest eight years ago, the bird lived at an educational rehabilitation center in South Dakota until the center closed last month. There, it was named Wowicakes (pronounced “Wo-whee-jah-kah”), the Lakota Indian word for “that which is real.”

But that’s not only difficult to say, it’s spelled, as Shimmel noted, like “Wowie Cakes.”

Which, of course, would be an intriguing name in itself for, say, a parrot that likes to repeat its name. But it doesn’t exactly conjure the image of America’s proud national bird.

But then arguably neither does Carl, one of the 30 to 40 suggestions that have come in so far in the raptor center’s “Name the Eagle” contest that runs through this month.

The winner gets a one-on-one visit with the gorgeous bird thought to be a male and about 12 years old. The sex of eagles and other birds of prey is often outwardly impossible to know without a peek — literally — inside them, Shimmel explained.

“We’d have to knock him (him?) out and check with a laparoscope,” she said.

Handler Kit Lacy on Tuesday took the bird out of his temporary aviary — which like all of the aviaries featured stockings, hung with care — and fed it a yummy quail carcass. The nameless bird is the fourth bald eagle in residence at the raptor center, a nonprofit nature center and wildlife hospital since 1987 that houses all sorts of birds of prey, from vultures to falcons to hawks.

No Name eventually will room with Denali, a female eagle. The center’s other two bald eagles are named McKenzie and Aeolous, the Greek god of winds.

After it was found in Nebraska in 2002 with a broken humerus in its right wing, the center’s new eagle was sent to the University of Minnesota Raptor Center for evaluation and deemed unable to live in the wild any longer because of limited mobility in the injured wing. It then landed in the rehab center in Rapid City, S.D. But that facility recently closed, most likely because of a lack of finances, Shimmel said.

Since the naming contest began shortly after Thanksgiving, suggestions, many from children, have included Squ3aky Head (yes, with the “e” turned backward to look like a “3”), Screech, Aiden, Rinpoche and Magnus.

Shimmel said one of the funniest suggestions received so far is a take on “He-Who-Must-Not-Be- Named,” Lord Voldemort, the antagonist in the Harry Potter books and films.

That would be?

Baldemort.