These days, seeing a bald eagle nest isn’t that large a deal. It actually was in 1979. That 12 months, there have been solely 4 nests recognized in Ohio. The magnificent raptor was on its manner out, largely the sufferer of DDT poisoning.
Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (good factor for acronyms!) was a pesticide generally used for agricultural functions. When it made its manner into the meals chain, the influence was disastrous on sure fowl species. In the case of the bald eagle, DDT weakened egg shells, stopping profitable hatches.
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Richard Nixon was inaugurated on Jan. 20, 1969, and certainly one of his first main initiatives was addressing environmental points. He signed the Environmental Protection Agency into existence on Dec. 2, 1970, and one of many fledging company’s first actions was to ban DDT. That occurred in the summertime of 1972.
The restoration of bald eagles following the DDT ban was a sluggish highway. By 1989, there have been a dozen nests in Ohio, and by 2000 almost 60 nests had been recognized.
The majestic nationwide image is off to the races now. The Ohio Division of Wildlife estimates there are over 800 lively nests in 2022, a meteoric improve.
Taking a gawk on the hawk
I’ve seen an excellent many eagle nests through the years, however nothing just like the one which I noticed on June 3. Photographer Stephanie Gaiser despatched me a notice a few nest not removed from Dublin through which one of many chicks was decidedly not just like the others. Her story impressed me to go to instantly.
Upon arrival to the nest, the 2 large eagle chicks caught out like sore thumbs. But, wait! Right between them was a relatively elfin red-tailed hawk chick! It seemed about half the eaglets’ dimension, but everybody appeared to get alongside. At one level, an grownup eagle got here in and dropped a big fish within the nest. Everyone dug into the sushi.
By the time that I visited, each eaglets and hawk had been almost absolutely grown and often examined their wings with vigorous flapping. The younger red-tail even made brief hovers and check flights across the capacious aerie. The variations in dimension was putting. A bald eagle weighs about 10 kilos, is over 2.5 toes lengthy, and has a wingspan of eight toes or so. The red-tailed’s stats: 2.5 kilos, 1.5 toes lengthy, and the wings span about 4 toes.
The million-dollar query is how did the hawk find yourself in an eagle aerie? One concept is that one of many grownup eagles plucked the red-tailed hawk chick from its nest and introduced it again for meals. The hawk miraculously survived the ordeal, and the eagles had been fooled into pondering it certainly one of their very own.
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I put little inventory in that rationalization. More doubtless is {that a} pair of red-tailed hawks tried to acceptable the eagle nest for their very own use, solely to have the rightful house owners seem and reclaim it. By then, the feminine hawk had already laid an egg or eggs, which had been incubated together with the eagle eggs. And voila! Strange bedfellows.
Fly like an eagle
This isn’t the primary recognized incidence of bald eagles rearing red-tailed hawks. Two occurrences have been documented in British Columbia, and one every in Michigan and Washington State.
Bald eagle chicks are extremely aggressive and recognized to have interaction in fratricide — they often kill one another. Which makes it all of the extra stunning {that a} hawk chick would survive. But red-tailed hawks are very feisty and this one didn’t appear to take guff from his big siblings.
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