Discover public eagle watching
To offset the doldrums of a Pennsylvania winter, bring your binoculars and take a "soar" for eagle viewing.
At the Kinzua Dam in Warren County, Pennsylvania, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recently joined with the Pennsylvania Game Commission (and other nature-minded groups) to provide a yearly eagle-viewing event. To insure their annual watch was user-friendly, the gates across the dam allowed for public access, showing humans a bird's eye view of the Allegheny River tailwaters below this huge reservoir.
Learn more about Bald Eagles
At the Visitor Center, Wildlife Conservation Officer, David Donachy presented an informational program about bald eagle habitat preservation and efforts made to restore the bird's population. Since bald eagles are not native to Pennsylvania, the annual viewing event helps educate the public about their slow reproduction rates and the laws protecting them.
"Right now, in the southern part of the state, the eagles start sitting on nests. Here, the nests are still mostly vacant," said Donachy. "Since we've had unseasonably warm weather for February, the lakes where the eagles generally feed were not frozen. When those lakes do freeze, the river is the common feeding place, and that makes eagle sightings plentiful."
The Federal Government lists bald eagles as "threatened."
Once on the federal list as "endangered," bald eagles are still a "threatened" species. Yet they command the sky with a wingspan of up to eight feet with eyesight so keen they see objects five times sharper than humans.
Fish provide the eagles major dietary choice, but they can also feed on other birds, small mammals, or carrion, using their piercing yellow beak to tear apart the prey. An eagles pointed talons come in handy when fishing, for they can catch and hold a slippery fish, often to carry back to the eyrie for feeding their young.
Eagles are generally migratory.
A female eagle will lay from one to three eggs in the large nest during March or April, but both male and female will incubate the eggs. In a little over a month the young eaglets will hatch, but they cannot fly for about three months. The parents, who mate for life, must continually work to feed the hatchlings, whose immature feathers are speckled in brown and white. By late August or September, eagles generally migrate south as far as Florida for the winter and often return to the same nest in spring.
In Pennsylvania, many eagles are seen nearby their nesting areas even throughout the winter and have been spotted during all seasons. The three most popular wintering areas for eagles are in Pymatuning, the upper Delaware River, (Pike County) and the lower parts of the Susquehanna River between Lancaster and York counties.
Human interactions can be negative
The bald eagles have no real enemies, except for their unfortunate collisions with man's obstructions, like vehicles or power lines. But there are several factors that negatively affect their reproduction, such as egg predators, human intrusions, and chemicals toxic to their environment.
These awesome birds, chosen in 1782 as the national symbol of the United States, offer Pennsylvanians and visitiors alike an uplifting, patriotic experience when viewed in the wild.
Sources:
Kinzua Dam Eagle Watch, Personal Visit, Feb. 4, 2012.
Fergus, Chuck,Wildlife Notes-32, LDRO603/Eagles and Osprey.
Peterson, Roger Tory, A Fieild Guide to the Birds, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1980, p. 158, 166-167.
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