By MARSHA MERCER
The sun shone, the Potomac River reflected a cloudless
blue sky and high in a tree were two majestic bald eagles.
They perched side by side on a leafless branch where eagles
had nested for years along the George Washington Memorial Parkway a few miles
north of Mount Vernon. The nest was gone, perhaps destroyed by heavy rain or
wind, but on a bright post-Christmas morning this week, the eagles were back.
As my partner Keith and I took pictures, a passerby said:
“There are George and Martha, watching over us.”
The sighting was a good omen made even better about 20
minutes later when we spotted two more bald eagles, or maybe the same ones, in
wooded parkland by the river. Someone told us the eagles often hang out on a small
island nearby.
The chance encounters with eagles and their admirers
were cheerful moments at the end of a largely cheerless year.
Seeing bald eagles in the wild is no longer the
miraculous event it was in the 1960s. Today, their presence delights us and is
a welcome reminder America can do something right for the environment.
After nearing extinction in 1963 with fewer than 500 nesting
pairs remaining, the bald eagle population in 2019 was an estimated 316,700
individuals, including 71,400 nesting pairs, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
reported last year. The population had quadrupled since data were last
collected in 2009.
“The bald eagle is an Endangered Species Act success
story,” the service says on its website.
A species native to North America, the bald eagle was
chosen our nation’s symbol in 1782. Benjamin Franklin famously was not a fan.
He called the bald eagle “a bird of bad moral character. It does not get its
living honestly” but steals from other birds.
While bald eagles eat mostly fish, waterfowl, small
mammals and carrion, they got an undeserved reputation as preying on farm
animals. Farmers shot many to protect their livestock. Eagles’ numbers also suffered
from a loss of habitat.
Congress passed protection for the bald eagle in 1940,
prohibiting killing, selling or possessing the raptor. It added protection for
the golden eagle in 1962.
After World War II, the advent of DDT, a pesticide
used to control mosquitoes, decimated the bald eagle population. The chemical
washed into waterways and eagles ate contaminated fish with disastrous results.
Eagles’ egg shells were so thin they broke during incubation.
Rachel Carson’s book “Silent Spring,” published in
1962, awoke many to the environmental dangers of pesticides.
The Endangered Species Act, signed by President
Richard Nixon in 1973, and a ban on DDT gave bald eagles a second chance. The
wildlife service and its partners stepped up captive breeding and
reintroduction programs, law enforcement, habitat protection and land
purchases.
The bald eagle’s remarkable comeback led to its
removal from the endangered list in 2007. It remains protected by other
measures.
Franklin and other founders could not have imagined
that today we can watch eagles on 24-hour HD cameras trained on their nests. The
closeups show us bald eagles aren’t actually bald. They have snowy white heads
on charcoal-brown bodies.
Bald eagles usually mate for life and return to the
same nests time and again.
But there was trouble at home this year between the
National Arboretum’s bald eagles, Mr. President and First Lady, who first
nested there in 2015 and fledged seven eaglets.
Cameras captured the drama in their nest 80-feet above
the earth in a tulip poplar tree as interlopers started dropping in. First Lady
tried to chase the females away.
“She would come in at 50 to 60 mph with the talons
out,” Dan Rauch, wildlife biologist, told The Washington Post. But she herself was displaced in February by
a younger female who cozied up to Mr. President and stayed. It was 2021, wasn’t
it?
Initially, the new female was known as V5, but she recently
was given the name Lotus, for Lady of the United States. She and Mr. President
mated last week.
So, as life continues in the eagles’ nests, we can all
be grateful for the bald eagles’ recovery.
©2021 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
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