Farmland Eagles

     For a couple of hours one afternoon in the latter half of December, 2018, I saw eleven majestic bald eagles, both adults and immatures, perched like musical notes on a page, in a row of tall, leafless deciduous trees in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania farmland.  The eagles had been feeding on dead chickens or turkeys that were discarded in a nearby field, but were resting and digesting when I spotted them in the trees.  Though I have seen bald eagles many times soaring elegantly over farmland in southeastern Pennsylvania, it's still a thrill to see those handsome predators/scavengers in that human-made habitat where they are not expected to be.  Their being in a variety of habitats, natural and human-made, demonstrates that bald eagles are adaptable, a trait that makes any species of living being successful on this planet.
      I have seen many wintering bald eagles scavenging dead farm animals in Lancaster County fields.  And I have even seen them feeding on wildlife killed on local country roads.  Fortunately, those stately birds rise before oncoming vehicles. 
     Though predators on larger fish and other creatures, bald eagles, as scavengers, compete with turkey vultures, black vultures, red-tailed hawks and American crows for dead animals in fields and on roads.  Eagles generally have the size and power to chase away the other kinds of scavengers as they feed on a dead animal.  Often I will see vultures and red-tails either perched on the ground or soaring as they wait their turn at a carcass a bald eagle is feeding on.   
     Cropland in southeastern Pennsylvania is a medley of meadows, fields of crops, hedgerows of trees, shrubbery and weeds between fields, woodlots, and streams and creeks.  And adaptable farmland balds find prey in all those habitats.
     Bald eagles, as a species, are usually thought of as living along rivers and estuaries, and they do, in winter, and during summer as nesting pairs and their young.  Scores and scores of balds winter along the Susquehanna River, particularly at Conewingo and Safe Harbor Dams where turbulence caused by water falling through turbines and into the river downstream from the dams keeps the water open.  There eagles, herons, mergansers and gulls can still catch fish.
     Several pairs of balds nest in trees along the Susquehanna as well.  There they catch fish from the river, and other creatures, to feed their young.   
     But many other individuals and mated pairs of bald eagles live year around and nest in farmland, usurping or building large stick nests high in tall trees in certain fields and pastures, some of them near streams.  Many of the stick nurseries bald eagles take over were originally made by red-tailed hawks, American crows, great blue herons and other kinds of larger birds adapted to cropland.  The eagles enlarge those cradles to suit themselves. 
     The magnificent bald eagles have been and are spotted most anywhere and anytime, year around, in southeastern Pennsylvania farmland in recent years.  During many of my field trips in local farmland, I see an eagle or two.  Because some bald eagles live and nest in cropland, their species has gained nesting sites, food resources and populations.  As a species, balds are no longer restricted to rivers and estuaries to live and reproduce.  
     I have seen many bald eagle nests in farmland in Lancaster County through several recent years, some of which are no longer in use.  Balds tend to move to other nest sites through the years, perhaps as prey critters become scarce at a site used for a few or several years.  Some of the huge, stick cradles I've seen are in lone trees in fields, in large sycamore trees along streams in meadows, and a couple in small woodlots surrounded by cropland. A bald eagle nest located in a woodlot outside Hanover in York County, Pennsylvania can be seen on the internet.  Woodlots, fields and Lake Marburg surround that eagle nest site.
     Bald eagles have made a great comeback in recent years, including here in southeastern Pennsylvania, because of the ban on the use of DDT, full protection of raptors, and the eagles' own ability to adapt to a variety of habitats.  We can now enjoy the presence of these great birds almost anyplace, anytime of year.  Bald eagles are another bit of magnificent, adaptable wildness in human-controlled farmland.