Bald Eagle
With
a wingspan longer than seven feet, the bald eagle (Haliaeetus
leucocephalus) is a majestic and graceful bird of prey. A common
winter visitor to the Great Plains, bald eagle numbers first
declined in this region when market hunters destroyed the great
buffalo herds - and so too disappeared the carcasses on which
eagles fed - during the 1800s. The bald eagle has a
barrel-shaped body measuring 32- to 40-inches long. It's hooked
bill and legs are massive and yellow. Adult birds are dark brown
to black. Their distinctive white head and tail plumage develops
during their fourth or fifth year.
Immature birds are dark brown with mottled white wings and are
often confused with golden eagles. Bald eagles feed primarily on
fish, but they also eat rodents, other small mammals and carrion
(dead and decaying flesh). When hunting, the great bird circles
high in the sky, scanning the ground with its keen eyesight and
swooping down suddenly to take its prey. The bald eagle is an
efficient hunter whose sharp talons rarely miss their target.
Because of their appetite for fish, bald eagles are often found
near water. Oklahoma's large reservoirs and river systems are
ideal eagle habitat, especially from mid-October through
mid-March, when wintering eagles spread throughout the state.
Mainly a winter resident, bald eagles arrive in mid-October and
stay through mid-March. The birds are primarily found in the
eastern and central areas of the state during this time,
although some pairs have established permanent nest sites in the
state. Bald eagles have a daredevil-like courtship, with 100-mph
dives and plummeting somersaults.
After pairing, both eagles build a colossal nest as high as 70
feet off the ground in the fork of a tree or side of a cliff.
Constructed of sticks, branches, foliage, and lined with a deep
layer of finer material, the same nest is used and augmented
year after year. As a result, it will often grow to enormous
proportions. As early as October, the female lays a clutch of
two eggs. Both parents share in the duties of incubating and
feeding the chicks. The young hatch after 35 days, and three
months later, when they can fly and hunt on their own, the
adults drive the fledglings from the nest. With its fierce and
independent demeanor, the bald eagle was chosen as our national
emblem in 1782. Eagle populations have periodically fluctuated,
with the most recent threat to the birds' survival being
pesticides such as DDT. The pesticide found its way into the
food chain in the 1950s and '60s, accumulating in the fish and
animals that form the basis of the eagle's diet. The
accumulation of the chemical in the eagles' bodies resulted in
their eggs being paper-thin, which resulted in broken egg shells
and no eaglets being hatched. Thanks to laws banning chemicals
such as DDT, the bald eagle has made a dramatic recovery over
the last 30 years. In fact, the comeback has been so spectacular
that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service removed the stately bird
from the threatened species list on June 28, 2007, putting an
exclamation point on one of America's most successful
conservation stories. In 2007, 49 nesting pairs were found
throughout the state. Evidence of this success is becoming more
common each year, as more Oklahomans see this monarch patrolling
the skies over our state's reservoirs.