This report about American Bald Eagles with 30+ pages and over 100 photos from 6 different
states was put together as a casual by-product of many a year of Birding. Updates from 2019 featuring a nest in Iona/Fort Myers, FL with the count of 3 healthy hatchlings. Quite a rare event.
Today, as conservation efforts have succeeded, Bald Eagles have become fairly common
and are no longer on the Endangered Species list. After observing an eagle pair nest at
a distance of +/-50 yards from a popular ice cream stop along a tourist town's main street in FL,
I also have taken them off my priority list. Now, why would a pair of America's Birds establish
a nest adjacent to a busy parking lot..? Simple. First came the developers and bulldozers.
After most of the dense forests had been razed to make way for housing, malls and cars,
after all that, hurricanes took down what had become easy targets. Therefore, with choices
gone, eagles now nest in the very few tall trees left standing. Sure, there are a few images
I'd like to get, but I'm not actively striving after them. If they come about, they come about.
And I certainly would like to be able to capture more of the exciting Rumble-Tumble kind
of action with my current digital equipment which can result in much cleaner and sharper
images like the one on top of this page (from 2009). This partner of the nest mentioned above, practically ignored about a dozen or so spectators snap-shooting from less than 20 yards away.
In many cases a Bald Eagle on a perch will just take off at the approach of a curious human,
careful as one might be. And so it happened in the photo below one winter day in early 2000 somewhere close to the Illinois River not too far from Ellis Bay where I got to do
the American Kestrel story a few months later...