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Let's learn about bald eagles!
Famously the national bird and symbol of the United States of America, the bald eagle is
a bird of prey. As birds, bald eagles are warm-blooded, they have beaks and wings, they
lay eggs, and they are covered in feathers. Despite its name, bald eagles are not bald.
Their name comes from the word 'piebald,' which means 'covered in patches of light and
dark colors.' The white head and tail contrasted with its dark body make the bald eagle easy
to identify!
Bald eagles are a type of sea eagle, and may reach a body length of up to 40 inches or
102 cm, a wingspan of up to 7.5 feet or 2.3 meters, and weights reaching nearly 14 lbs
or 6.3 kg. Bald eagles are the largest type of eagle native to North America, and the
only eagle that can be found only in North America. It ranges over most of Canada and
Alaska, all of the lower 48 states, as well as parts of Mexico.
Bald eagles are carnivores, eating mostly fish, but they will also eat rabbits, beavers,
geese, reptiles and crabs as well as other creatures, and carrion - or animals that have
already died. Because they prefer to eat fish, the bald eagle can be found near large bodies
of water where they can find food, with large old trees where they can nest.
Bald eagles need large, strong trees because they build huge nests. The bald eagle builds
the largest nest of any bird in North America, and the largest tree nest of any animal in
the world. The nest of a bald eagle can be up to 13 feet or 4 meters deep, over 8 feet
or 2.5 meters wide, and weigh more than a ton. The largest nest ever measured was almost
10 feet or more than 3 meters wide and 20 feet or 6 meters deep. Bald eagles choose
a mate for life, and each year the pair returns to the same nest, making it bigger and stronger.
Since eagles may live 30 years or more in the wild, it is easy to see how these nests
can become so massive.
Young bald eagles, or juveniles, look dramatically different from adults. They do not have the
distinctive white head and tail until they reach adulthood at four or five years of age.
Instead, they have dark brown feathers with varying amounts of white streaks in their plumage.
The bald eagle began to be used as a symbol for the United States of America back in 1782
when it first appeared on the Great Seal, but it can now be found on American money,
flags, documents, public buildings, and passports.
The bald eagle was a common sight in the America of the 1700s, with populations estimated to
be as high as 500,000 eagles, but by the 1950s there were just over 400 known nesting pairs
of bald eagles left. The population had dropped for several reasons. As forests were cleared
across America, the bald eagles lost important habitat. People also thought that bald eagles
would kill and eat their chickens and sheep, so tens of thousands of them were shot. Finally,
a chemical called DDT, which was used to kill insects, was poisoning the eagles and stopping
them from hatching healthy chicks.
In an effort to stop the bald eagle from going extinct, Congress approved the Bald and Golden
Eagle Protection Act, and in 1967 the bald eagle was added to the list of endangered
species. In 1972 the use of DDT was banned in the United States. With these protections
in place, the eagle population began to recover, and in 1995 the bald eagle was removed from
the list of endangered species. It is thought that there are currently 70,000 bald eagles
living in North America.
I hope you enjoyed learning about bald eagles today. Goodbye till next time!