Nature Notes: Bald eagles in Connecticut have a banner year
Bald eagles in Connecticut “smashed” breeding records in 2019, and had an even better year in 2020, according to one official with the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.
“2020 was a lousy year for humans, but a good one for bald eagles,” Brian Hess, a wildlife biologist, acknowledged during a recent phone call.
Hess said DEEP staff and volunteers in 2020 recorded 72 active bald eagle territories, defined as a location where two adults worked on building and defending a nest, compared with 64 in 2019. They also reported 47 successful nests, compared with 45 the previous year, and 88 chicks hatched, compared with 83 in 2019.
While this news is encouraging, Hess said bald eagles are still recovering from their population lows in the mid to latter half of the 20th century. Between the mid-1950s and 1982, Hess said there were no bald eagle nests in Connecticut, largely due to DDT pesticides thinning eggshells and preventing many raptors from successfully rearing chicks.
During the pandemic, Hess said data collection for the 2020 breeding season was severely hampered.
“We were pretty much at home from mid-March to the beginning of June, and that’s when a lot of that data collection for the eagle nesting season occurs,” he said. “I give our volunteers a lot of credit, because even though I’m not allowed to ask them to go out and do the stuff they do, a lot of them did it, and we were able to piece together most of the information we needed for 2020.”
Why do these magnificent birds matter? Hess said bald eagles matter for several reasons.
“First, they are indicators that our waterways are healthy and clean,” he said. “Bald eagles are also at the top of the food chain and really do have an influence on the ecosystem in which they live.”
Finally, Hess said, “There are a ton of wildlife species that are declining, not doing well, or need intervention, and bald eagles are a great example of how there are opportunities for successes out there.”
Bill Hobbs lives in Stonington. He can be reached at whobbs246@gmail.com.
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