by Dan True A FAMILY OF EAGLES
In the last thirty or so years I've chased rumors of nesting bald eagles. I've traveled highways and back roads across New Mexico and the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles. Cowboys and ranchers showed me weathered nests they claimed were once occupied by bald eagles. At each site, however, the sky was empty of bald eagles.
Seeking additional information, I queried John Hubbard, the state's endangered species expert in Santa Fe. Hubbard said that of the more than 300 bald eagles that winter here, none had been known, with absolute certainty, to stay and nest. His files contain references of oldtimers claiming to have seen nesting bald eagles, but positive verification was not available.
Nevertheless, I was encouraged by claims that at one time the eagle, for many a symbol of the United States itself, might have nested in our part of the world.
I kept chasing rumors. The payoff for my persistence finally came. A doctor in a small town in northeastern New Mexico called and explained that his son and a teen-age classmate had discovered what might be a nesting pair of bald eagles.
I asked my usual questions: Size of the birds? Head and tail feathers white? Undersides all dark? His answers pumped my adrenaline. Further talk yielded more information, and I sensed this lead had to be followed promptly. The soonest I could travel was 10:35 pm. At 10:36 pm I was rolling north in my van from Albuquerque.
Next morning at about 10, from a dirt road, the doctor, his wife, the son and his classmate pointed across fenced grassland toward a grove of cottonwoods a mile distant. They said the nest was there. I raised my binoculars. Top branches of the tallest tree held a nest 8 to 10 feet across and at least 5 feet thick.
As I watched, an eagle-sized bird approached the grove. The bird's head feathers and tail fan glistened white as snow against the morning's blue sky. It hovered above the nest briefly. A second later the bird landed and two dark-feathered, half-grown chicks popped up, as though roused from sleep. The chicks seemed to feed and I assumed the adult bird had brought food, possibly a fish from a lake less than a mile beyond the nest. Above the nest some two or three hundred feet, a smaller adult circled. I knew then the bird that landed was a female bald eagle and that the circling bird was a male.
A family of bald eagles. Right here in New Mexico. It was a beautiful sight.
Dan True is the author of Hummingbirds of North America, published by the University of New Mexico Press. He is an aviator and former weatherman for the Albuquerque and Amarillo, Texas markets. He and his wife, Diane, write extensively about hummingbirds. Visit their web site to learn more.
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