Bald Eagles Give & Take
Although a Bald Eagle is massive, has excellent eye sight, powerful leg muscles and strong talons to grip prey with, their predilection for foraging for live prey (mostly fish but also mammals, birds and reptiles) isn’t as great as one might imagine. Often they (particularly immature eagles who lack experience foraging) resort to scavenging dead animals or stealing prey from other birds rather than capturing live prey. Marauded birds include ospreys and herons which are better at capturing live fish and aren’t particularly good at defending themselves.
What seems fitting given that eagles secure much of their food from other birds is that they in turn provide many birds and predators with a meal . Crows, ravens, coyotes, bobcats, and foxes all are known to move in when they become aware of an easy dinner. Eagles are said to be easily displaced by these species at scavenging sites. The pictured American Crows, however, are patiently waiting their turn. (Photo: American Crows waiting for 2nd year Bald Eagle to finish feeding on a fish; inset – Bald Eagle’s 5″-long tracks)
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Bald Eagles On Eggs
Thanks in large part to the Vermont Bald Eagle Restoration Initiative, seeing eagles in Vermont is not all that unusual these days, even in winter. The open water of Lake Champlain (as well as ice fishermen and White-tailed Deer carcasses in other parts of the state) allow them to survive here during our coldest months. Vermont’s mid-winter Bald Eagle Survey documented 84 eagles in January, 2018.
Equally as encouraging is the growing breeding population of eagles in this state. This past year 21 adult Bald Eagle pairs successfully produced 35 young in Vermont. The return of eagles to their nest site is always a much- anticipated event, which often coincides with the opening up of the Connecticut River for at least one pair that nests on its banks (see photo).
Eggs have been laid and eagles (both male and female) are engaged in incubating them for the next month. One can’t help but be impressed by their perseverance — recently they endured three Nor’easters in 10 days while incubating their eggs (note snow on rim of nest)!
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Bald Eagles Tending Young Eaglets
In the Northeast, Bald Eagle eggs are hatching and the heads of the one-to-three chicks can be seen bobbing up and down, anxiously begging for a tidbit of food from one of their parents. For the first two or three weeks, their mother stays with them 90 percent of the time, keeping them warm and tearing food brought by their father into little pieces that she feeds to her chicks. Eventually food-gathering is shared equally between the parents, and is usually sufficient to produce a weight gain of 3 ½ ounces a day for male chicks, and 4 ½ ounces per day for the female chicks. (Female raptors are typically larger than the males.) The chicks in these photos are approximately two weeks old and are covered with their darker, second coat of down, which comes in when they are a little over a week old.
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