This week’s highlighted visitor: The Bald Eagle!
A raptor you can spot soaring high above lakes, rivers, and open fields, Bald Eagles are powerful birds with striking white heads and tails contrasting against their dark bodies. These majestic hunters glide effortlessly on wide wings, scanning the water below for fish or small mammals. Their loud, sharp calls can be heard echoing across the landscape as they circle overhead, a symbol of strength and freedom in the sky.
Bizarrely enough, the Bald Eagle was not in fact America’s national bird as the distinction was never conferred by Congress until 2024. Despite it’s cultural and symbolic importance, the Bald Eagle has not always been favored by the American public. Farmers and ranchers persecuted Eagles along with other raptors for stealing farm animals. Then the rise of DDT as a means of controlling agricultural pests caused raptor populations to decline as DDT degraded the quality of their eggshells, plummeting their populations.
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