Status
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Group
A recovery so complete it is now hard to explain how close it came.
By the early 1960s there were roughly 400 nesting pairs left in the contiguous United States. DDT was the mechanism: its metabolite thinned eggshells until incubating adults crushed their own clutches. The 1972 ban, combined with protection of nest trees and shoreline, removed the cause rather than treating the symptom, and the population climbed for five decades.
Eagles are also unembarrassed thieves, taking fish from ospreys in the air rather than catching their own, and they will scavenge carrion and winter kill without hesitation. Nests are reused and extended year after year until some reach two and a half metres across — among the largest built by any bird.
The open shelf
More frames of the bald eagle
Streamed live from the Commons Quality Images archive, eighteen at a time. Tap any frame to study it — each remains its photographer’s.
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