Can't do a series on the 1970s without talking about the environmentalism movement! Julie and Ivy find a baby owl that fell out of a tree, and that leads Julie to start volunteering at a local wildlife rehabilitation center. At this point in time, California only has 30 nesting pairs of bald eagles, and one of them is here at the center recovering from a wing injury. However, if a hack tower isn't installed for their nest, the pair and their clutch will have to live in captivity. Bald eagles are one of the great successes of the Endangered Species Act (I see them periodically in my neck of the woods), but Julie and the Eagles is a reminder that recovery was needed for such a devastating bottleneck.

Funnily enough, Julie's birthday invites where she explicitly writes "1976" are what clued in other readers that the first one isn't actually 1974. I was suspicious when Tracy saw Jaws in a theater in 2, and the Chinese New Year being the start of a dragon year makes it explicit in 3. Julie and Ivy singing Take it To The Limit (released November 1975) also confirms this. ( )

Julie and Ivy are walking in the park one day when they resuce a baby owl. When they take the owl to a local rescue center, Julie becomes involved in raising money for the release of a family of bald eagles. I'm confused because the birthday invitation that Julie sends indicates that it is now 1976, but I don't remember two years passing in the books and the date for the series is 1974. The backmatter this time is on "Caring for the Earth in the 1970s" and briefly chronicles the beginning of the environmental movement. ( )

Julie and Ivy come across a baby owl in the park, and when Julie brings it to a rescue center, she meets a family of bald eagles. These eagles need to be released back into the environment before they become habituated to living in captivity and can no longer survive in the wild. Through determination and good ideas, Julie and her class raise the money needed to build a tower so that they can finally be released. Julie's birthday isn't about cake and ice cream- it's about watching them finally get a chance at freedom. ( )