Eagle lands in Calais for her 16th summer
Thursday, March 23, 2006 - Bangor Daily News
CALAIS - The Washington County resident that has wowed spectators for years along Route 1 is back.
And she is again sitting high atop a utility pole at the Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge.
This is her 16th season summering Down East.
And this year, she is joined by about 12 immature eagles and three adults who have been seen flying around the area, in addition to her male partner, who has been seen carrying food to her.
Refuge wildlife biologist Maurry Mills said Wednesday he was uncertain if the immature eagles were related to the nesting pair.
"There's no way to tell," he said of the familial connection. "One was probably 3 to 4 years old because it had quite a bit of white on it. The rest look like ... younger birds. The young eagles move around quite a bit so they could be from almost anyplace."
But even though refuge personnel are uncertain where the other eagles are from, they are certain that the nesting pair along Route 1 is the same.
The female eagle began sitting on her eggs around March 15. She has likely laid one egg, possibly two.
To date, she has hatched 17 chicks. The mother has produced an average of one eaglet a year for the past 15 years. One year, she produced twins, and another year, she had triplets.
Soon, tiny heads should appear.
"It takes about 35 days for incubation, so around April 20, give or take a couple of days, [the babies should be born]," Mills said. "A lot of times, you don't see the heads because, depending upon the weather conditions, you don't see much activity. You might see feeding activity with the adults bringing food in back and forth, which indicates there is an eaglet."
It takes about 90 days from when the young hatch until they fledge.
"So if they hatch on April 20, [it will be] probably late July or early August before they take their first flight," Mills said.
The nest is near the intersection of Route 1 and the Charlotte Road.
The nesting pair returned to the refuge in late February to begin spring housecleaning. Their first order of business was to sweep out the old nest and replace it with fresh twigs.
The pair winters along the coast in the Cobscook Bay area. In early spring, when the ice leaves the lakes and marshes, they commute between the bay and the refuge as they rebuild their nest.
This year, they had a choice of homes. In the past few weeks, refuge personnel, working with the staff of Eastern Maine Electric Cooperative, built the pair a bigger platform.
The new nest was designed and constructed by refuge maintenance personnel working closely with the refuge's biological staff, but the two ignored it and instead went back to their familiar perch.
Building the couple a new home is not new at the refuge. More than a decade ago, refuge personnel built several nesting units for the local osprey population.
Soon, a pair of osprey took up residence at the Route 1 perch.
In 1991, refuge workers were surprised when a pair of eagles showed interest in the platform and appropriated it. Alert refuge personnel recognized the predicament of the displaced smaller birds and built the osprey a new platform about 1,000 feet from the eagles' home. The two bird families have nested as neighbors ever since.
The Magurrewock nesting territory has been home to a pair of eagles since 1965. At that time, they were one of only 32 pairs of bald eagles in the state. There was no nesting activity for several years until it was believed that the remaining adult eagle had found a new mate in 1991 when the pair established the utility platform as their home.
At one time, the bald eagle was listed as an endangered species. DDT, a widely used pesticide, ended up in the bodies of eagles and other predatory birds, and the chemical caused the shells of the eggs to crumble before they could be incubated.
In 1965, there were only four nesting pairs of eagles in the state, which produced a record low of four eaglets.
Today, there are more than 385 pairs of eagles in the state with as many as 298 eaglets produced annually.
Although the bald eagle remains on both the state and federal endangered species lists as threatened species, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has recently reopened the public comment on its original 1999 proposal to remove the bald eagle from the federal list of threatened and endangered species.
In 1963, only 417 nesting pairs of bald eagles were present in the lower 48 states. Today, that number has grown to 7,066 pairs because of the recovery efforts of the federal wildlife service and other federal agencies, American Indian tribes, state and local governments, conservation organizations, universities, corporations and thousands of individual Americans.
If removed from the Endangered Species List, the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act would still protect the eagle.
Link to Report
In Maine - Eagle Cam - watch in real time two nesting eagles Eagle Cam - Nesting Eagles
Contents
March 2006 Reports
Last updated on March 24, 2006