Waterway Eagle Nests

     In February of this year, I was thrilled to notice two mated pairs of bald eagles active at large, stick nests high in big, tall sycamore trees along waterways in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania farmland.  One eagle nursery is along a part of Mill Creek and the other is by a section of the Conestoga River, which is a small river.  I occasionally watched those eagle nests from inside my car at a discreet distance along rural roads so as to not disturb the eagles.  And the last time I checked on both eagle cradles, which was on April 22, 2016, I saw two large, dark youngsters in each one, each pair of offspring guarded by a watchful parent perched in a nearby tree.  The other parent of each pair probably was hunting prey animals to feed their young.  After viewing both eagle families on the same day, I was pleasantly amazed by the similarities between them.
     Sycamore trees, with their mottled light and darker bark, grow commonly along creeks and rivers,  watery habitats they define with their unique bark.  Bald eagles are attracted and adapted to creeks and rivers where they catch and scavenge larger fish, as well as other creatures.  And, given time, many sycamore trunks and limbs become massive, certainly strong enough to support the great weight of large bald eagle nests.  Big sycamores, then, are one of the reasons why bald eagles are attracted to Lancaster County waterways, as elsewhere, to hatch young.   But there are other reasons as well.
     Bald eagles have been protected by law for several years and many young eagles have been raised on and released from hacking towers on Susquehanna River islands to re-establish the species in southeastern Pennsylvania.  That, alone, increased bald eagle populations in this area.  Today, many balds winter along the Susquehanna and in Lancaster County farmland, habitats with much wildlife to hunt, and wildlife and farm animals to scavenge.  Plus people today realize bald eagles don't cause harm and are actually quite intriguing.  And the eagles' adapting to farmland and peoples' activities has also helped in their increased numbers in southeastern Pennsylvania, as well as across much of the Lower 48 States.  All the above has led to greatly increased bald eagle populations nationwide, and several pairs of balds nesting in Lancaster County in the past 15 years or more.
     There have been other pairs of bald eagles nesting along creeks in Lancaster County cropland in the past.  Some of those nests had been used for at least a few years, then abandoned by the eagles that moved on to other sites to construct nurseries.  The eagles might have depleted the supply of food animals in one area and moved on to fresh hunting areas.
     In the meantime, however, I was happy to monitor the two eagle nests I did this year.  It is heartening to know that bald eagles can adapt to human-made habitats and activities, including raising young, as long as they are left alone.