In Memory of America’s Oldest Bald Eagle
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If we don’t protect our precious creatures they will eventually go extinct, because man, insufferably greedy and narcissistic, would, for their own twisted purposes wipe them all out. Without protection our Bald Eagles would have gone the way of the now extinct Passenger Pigeon and scores of other birds, fish and animals that no longer exist in the world.
A few weeks ago, a Bald Eagle died in Henrietta, New York. It was struck by a car, probably while tearing into a roadkill rabbit carcass. This was no ordinary bird: Eagle 629-03142, age 38, was the oldest wild banded Bald Eagle on record in the United States, and an alumnus of a conservation program that brought eagles back from near-extinction in New York.
The eagle, a male, hatched in the summer of 1977, near a lake in northern Minnesota. At the time, Bald Eagles were on the endangered species list—at their lowest point, in 1963, only 487 breeding pairs remained in the lower 48 states. By 1974, that number had climbed to 791, but the recovery was slow going.
The infamous pesticide DDT had been outlawed since 1972, but it was still playing havoc with birds, as leftover DDT permeated the eagles’ bodies and weakened their eggshells. In the state of New York, only one breeding pair was left in the wild, in a nest by the shores of Hemlock Lake—and they kept accidentally smashing every egg they laid.
But biologists had a plan to replace New York’s absent eagles. At just a few weeks old, 03142, as he was known, was whisked from his Minnesotan nest and taken to New York’s Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge, along with a few eaglets from other states. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC), which ran the program, wanted the eaglets to imprint on their new location, not on people, so the biologists raised the eaglets using a low-contact technique called “hacking,” hiding from the young birds and housing them in cages on stilts. These “hacking towers” gave the eaglets an excellent view out over Montezuma Refuge, and kept them safe as they grew.
The biologists hoped that the young eagles would stick around their new home after they fledged—and so they did. A few years later, the male half of New York’s last original breeding pair died, and 03142 took his place in the old nest at Hemlock Lake. Over next few decades, 03142 fathered many young eaglets, doing his part to push his species out of danger.
Read more about these Bald Eagles at Audubon.com
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Humanity are destroying so many other living things. The list of creatures extinct because of humanity and well on the way to extinction is horrifically long.
I doubt any other Eagles will make it to that age the way we carry on.
I had no idea they lived that long
We often see eagles here, we know where several nests are and photograph them regularly. At times we have seen as many as 6 adults in close proximity down on the creek banks. Always a thrill.
We are constantly amazed. Amazed by the birds, their majesty, their capabilities, watching them in flight and at the hunt.
But more so, that we see them at all. I never saw an eagle for the first 40 years of my life, never heard of them anywhere except the Rocky Mountains and Alaska. Then there started to be rumors of them in the area, a nesting pair at Pymatuming reservoir on the Ohio/Pennsylvania border. From the nature center there you could see the nest with a telescope. There was always a line. I saw my first eagle there in 1998.
Then about 5 years later ospreys, the fish eagle, arrived on our local Lake Wilhelm. They nested in dead trees out in the middle of the manmade lake. we could paddle our canoe right up to them! First one nesting pair, then 5, then 10, then only 8, 7…. what was going on?
Bald Eagles return north earlier than the ospreys do, eagles were taking over the more remote nesting spots. Suddenly we had eagles. Right now I know of 8 active osprey and 3 active eagle nests on Wilhelm, all with chicks fledged, or about to. It is a pleasure to see them.
Here on the farm we see them hunting. We see them dive down to grab small critters – groundhog kits, mice, moles, voles, rabbits, and we are pretty sure we watched one dive on one of our small cats. She is now very wary now going outside!
And snakes. We have seen them grab some pretty big snakes, fly high and drop them to kill them, then come back to get them.
It used to be that most any time we went down to the lake or the creek we’d see snakes, in the water, on the rocks sunning themselves. But since the eagles are here, we very seldom see any snakes at all. There is an island in the lake we call snake island because of all the snakes seen there – years ago. This year it was full of goose nests, a good sign that there aren’t the snakes.
Just one more reason to appreciate the eagles!