A bald eagle who calls a Lake Michigan nature center home is about to make her biggest appearance yet. Valkyrie, the resident raptor ambassador at Schlitz Audubon Nature Center in Bayside, Wisconsin, will join the national anthem ceremony at the World Series, following a postseason run that already saw her perform at Milwaukee Brewers playoff games.
The appearance caps a remarkable rise for a bird who started out as an orphaned eaglet. As reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Valkyrie has already handled the pressure of playoff crowds at Brewers games, and the outlet describes her as cool under pressure while raising awareness for nature conservation. Valkyrie was hatched in the wild in 2011 and fledged at three months old before she became habituated to humans after being fed by local fishermen and picnickers, according to Schlitz Audubon Nature Center. That comfort around people, which made her unable to survive independently in the wild, is exactly what led the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to transfer her to the center later that year as a non-releasable raptor ambassador.
From Orphaned Eaglet to Stadium Veteran
Valkyrie is no stranger to roaring crowds. Before her World Series selection, she appeared during national anthems at Brewers playoff games at American Family Field, as well as Bucks games and Marquette Men's Basketball games, the Journal Sentinel reports. The newspaper's account notes that Valkyrie made postseason appearances for the Brewers during both the 2026 NLDS and NLCS home games, building a local sports legacy well before her advance to a national stage.
Those American Family Field ceremonies were elaborate productions in their own right. Valkyrie's Brewers pregame appearances featured singer Jenny Thiel, while season seat members held a giant American flag across the outfield.
The Bird Behind the Ceremony
Valkyrie is an imposing presence up close. She weighs ten pounds, with a wingspan of nearly six feet, yet her approximately 7,000 body feathers weigh only about a pound and her skeleton weighs less than a pound, with muscle making up most of her body mass, per the same Schlitz Audubon Nature Center account. Because female bald eagles typically run larger than males, Valkyrie is the largest resident bird at the center.
She is one of 16 non-releasable resident birds of prey in the center's permanent educational raptor program, which is led by Raptor Program Director Lindsay Focht, the center notes. The program also includes hawks, owls, falcons, an American crow, and a turkey vulture alongside its eagles. That outreach draws real crowds locally — the center's annual Xtreme Raptor Day event last November pulled in a record-breaking turnout of over 1,350 attendees, according to A Wealth of Nature.
Following in the Footsteps of Challenger
Valkyrie is joining a tradition with deep roots in American sports ceremony. The precedent for featuring bald eagles during national anthems at major events was set by Challenger, a human-imprinted male bald eagle cared for by the American Eagle Foundation who became the first eagle in U.S. history trained for stadium free flights, performing at multiple World Series games beginning in the late 1990s and 2001. Challenger retired from free-flight stadium appearances in 2019 after nearly three decades of travel.
Not every live eagle appearance at a ballpark has gone according to script. During pre-game ceremonies at a Minnesota Twins home opener in 2018, a free-flying bald eagle named Clark unexpectedly landed on the shoulder of Seattle Mariners pitcher James Paxton, a moment widely shared after Paxton remained still while the bird tried to perch, as MLB.com reported at the time. Valkyrie's appearances differ in one key way: unlike free-flying eagles such as Challenger or Clark, she is expected to stay with her handler during the anthem.
A Conservation Story Behind the Spectacle
Valkyrie's presence at these ceremonies carries a message beyond pageantry. Bald eagles were removed from the federal endangered species list in 2007 following a multi-decade recovery effort, according to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Federal permits are required to exhibit live bald eagles.
Those protections shape exactly how birds like Valkyrie can be shown to the public. Exhibiting live bald eagles requires a Federal Eagle Exhibition permit issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which mandates that all public displays serve an educational purpose and prohibits commercial exploitation. Permitted organizations must be non-profit educational or governmental bodies that meet strict caretaker and facility standards, per the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.
For now, Milwaukee gets to claim one of its own as a World Series fixture — a bird whose journey from an orphaned eaglet dependent on handouts from fishermen to a national anthem regular spans 15 years. Whether on a glove at American Family Field or on baseball's biggest stage, Valkyrie's appearances continue to double as a living reminder of how far the species has come.
