MONTPELIER — A pair of bald eagles have successfully nested and raised young in Vermont for the first time in three decades.
By Louis Porter Vermont Press Bureau"It's fantastic news. It is something we have been waiting for for a long time," said John Austin, director of wildlife for the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department.
Like other predatory birds, bald eagles were decimated by the use of DDT and other chemicals. The last breeding pair known to successfully raise young in the state did so in the early 1970s, Austin said.
As eagle populations have rebounded in recent years, Vermont biologists have looked on enviously as pairs of the birds have raised young to adulthood in New York state and in New Hampshire.
Several pairs have made nests — sometimes with biologists' help — along the Connecticut River or Lake Champlain.
However, the birds have not succeeded in raising young, until this year.
"We have had adult bald eagles living in the state of Vermont for a number of years now. What it seems to take in order to get them to nest is a lot of time, really," Austin said. "They need to re-acquaint themselves with the area and the habitat."
But this year, a pair successfully raised their young in a nest along the upper Connecticut River — although biologists won't reveal the exact location to protect the birds.
Several years ago state biologists and others concerned about the future of the eagle population brought young birds into the state.
"That was an important opportunity to establish some young eagles that would home back to Vermont," Austin said.
Several times since then, eagles have set up nests on human-constructed platforms or in trees. But this is the first year there is good evidence that a pair has hatched and successfully raised a young eagle.
The proof won't come for a year or so, but given the increase in the number of adult birds in Vermont recently and the successful nesting this year, Vermonters will likely see an increase in successfully nesting bald eagles, Austin said.
"Because we have been seeing an expansion in the number of adult eagles in and around Vermont … we are probably poised to start to see a real increase in the number of adult eagles setting up nests in Vermont," he said.
The bald eagle was removed from the federal engendered species list in 2007, but it still is on Vermont's list. Perhaps, with time, the eagle will be able to be removed from that protective category as the state has been successful in encouraging the recovery of populations of some other predatory birds in the past few years, like the loon, peregrine falcon and osprey.
"Through a lot of time and dedication from state biologists and federal biologists and most importantly volunteers we were able to recover those species," Austin said.
A birder took a photograph of an eaglet in the nest. In addition, after the pair of birds was done raising their young, Bill Conn, a forester with the Vermont Electric Power Co. (VELCO) climbed the massive white pine tree in which the eagles built their nest and — using a camera attached to a hard hat — filmed egg shells and other solid evidence that the nest was a successful breeding site this year.
State biologists and volunteers had reason to hope the nest was a successful site, but Conn looked for about 45 minutes before finding egg fragments, he said.
"I yelled down 'I have some shells, I have some shells,'" Conn said.
"I found a lot of fish bones," he said. "We also found some downy feathers that indicated there was probably an eaglet in there."
State biologists believed that since the young were no longer in the nest the adult eagles would probably not object to his climbing the tree, Conn said. But he was still pretty nervous about it, he said.
As he was coming down "off in the distance we were pretty sure we saw a pair of eagles flying around," Conn said.
Contact Louis Porter at
louis.porter@rutlandherald.com.
What you can do:Click here to learn more about the Vermont Bald Eagle Restoration Initiative and how you can help.
Posted by Sheryl Rapee-Adams, Best Friends Network Volunteer
Reprinted from here with permission from the Rutland Herald
Photos retrieved from U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service; images are not of the eagles described above