Wild Facts About The Bald Eagle

Fun Facts About The Bald Eagle

Bald Eagles Are Bigger Badder Fish Eagles

• Bald Eagles are primarily fish eaters that hunt directly by swooping down on fish swimming near the surface of a lake or river and snatching the fish up with their long, sharp, curved talons.
  • The birds find their fish prey by sight; they either soar over the water surface or settle on high perches and scan the water with their phenomenal eyesight.
• Bald Eagles compete directly with another fantastic, but much smaller, fish-eating North Carolina bird, the Osprey (Pandion haliaetus), which is informally known as the “Fish Eagle”.
  • Unlike Ospreys, Bald Eagles rarely enter the water when hunting; they prefer to fly very close to the surface and simply snatch shallow-swimming fish.
  • Being much bigger and stronger, Bald Eagles often steal fish from Ospreys in areas where the two species co-exist.

Bald Eagles Eat More Than Just Fish

• Fish make up the majority of Bald Eagles’ diets but Bald Eagles also take other prey, especially when raising nestlings.
  • Prey delivered to Bald Eagle nestlings in north-central Indiana by their parents over a 75 day period included:
    • 73% fish
    • 13% birds
    • 10% mammals
    • 4% reptiles (Houssein et al. 2021, https://doi.org/10.1674/0003-0031-186.1.122)
• Common prey other than fish can include:
  • American Crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos) (Ostrow 2006, https://doi.org/10.1676/05-116.1)
  • Gulls of various species (Buchanan and Watson 2010, https://www.jstor.org/stable/40856484)
  • Red-tailed Hawks (Buteo jamaicensis)
  • Snakes of various species.
  • Small mammals up to as large as White-tail Deer fawns (Odocoileus virginianus) (Duquette et al. 2011, https://doi.org/10.1656/045.018.0108).

Bald Eagles Require Our Absence

• Mated Bald Eagle pairs build huge, messy stick nests on high trees.
  • Barring damage to the nests or supporting trees from disasters like hurricanes, Bald Eagles re-use the same nests year after year..
• But Bald Eagles will abandon their nests, eggs, and hatchlings at any time if they are harassed or encroached up on by humans or human activity.
• Bald Eagles require isolation to successfully breed and rear eaglets.
  • Never crowd, harass or molest nesting birds, or investigate bird nests.
  • Stay an absolute minimum of a quarter mile (0.4 km) from any adult Bald Eagle or nest (Stokes and Stokes 1989).
• Although home ranges and core use areas vary, Bald Eagles need more space than we think:
  • In one study, an adult male Bald Eagle had home ranges of 1.6 square kilometers (non-nesting season) and 1.3 square kilometers (nesting season) and core use areas of 0.2 square kilometers (non-nesting season) and 0.1 square kilometers (nesting season) (Slankard, Patton, and Watts 2021, https://doi.org/10.1656/045.028.0109).

A Few Good Men And Women Saved The Bald Eagle

• The Bald Eagle has been the United States of America’s National Symbol since 1782.
  • In December 2024, it became the USA’s National Bird.
• But Americans haven’t always treated this majestic bird with the respect our much vaunted patriotism would demand.
• Bald Eagles were driven nearly to complete extinction throughout the entire country by the cumulative impact of rampant pesticide use and hunting, which would have been an immeasurable loss.
• Thankfully, the Bald Eagle population is recovering in many parts of its former range, thanks to the brilliant, admirable, and almost too late intervention of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
• The EPA banned the insecticide dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT) in 1972, and granted the Bald Eagle powerful protection under the Endangered Species Act.
  • Despite this recovery, Bald Eagles still face many hazards from environmental pollution, hunting, and infectious diseases.
  • But the species’ story shows that we humans can do more than simply destroy our fellow creatures — when we put our minds to it.