A big tree and a body of water

SHARON — Bald eagles are doing pretty well in Connecticut, according to Brian Hess of the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP).

Hess, assisted by his young daughter Kenna, spoke at the Sharon Audubon Center on a snowy Saturday morning, March 4, to three intrepid souls, a couple of Audubon staffers and a reporter.

Hess said he considers the bald eagle a “social keystone species,” alluding to the prevalence of the eagle in American iconography. The bird is front and center in the Seal of the United States, for example.

As for Benjamin Franklin’s oft-cited preference for the turkey as a better emblem of the young American republic, Hess said “that’s kind of a myth.”

Franklin’s famous letter, in which he derided the bald eagle as a “Bird of bad moral character” for the eagle’s habit of scavenging and/or snatching food from rival predators,  was written some years after the symbol had been adopted.

So the letter was more sour grapes than policy statement.

Bald eagles are big. They have a wing span between six and seven and a half feet, are some 34-36 inches from head to toe, and weigh in between eight and 16 pounds.

Females are up to 30% bigger than males.

Bald eagles have excellent eyesight, and have a stong, hooked bill and razor sharp talons for hunting. Their feet also have rough skin, the better to grasp their primary prey, fish.

As anglers, bald eagles prefer larger bodies of water — rivers rather than streams, lakes rather than ponds.

They don’t dive into the water like ospreys, Hess said. But they will get in the water if necessary.

Hess said he once watched a bald eagle going after a carp. Try as it might, the bird could not achieve lift-off with the large fish clutched in its talons.

So instead the eagle swam to shore, towing the fish behind it.

Bald eagles also eat ducks, gulls and assorted mammals.

To illustrate their opportunistic scavenging, and the sort of behavior Franklin found distasteful, Hess showed a dramatic video of a coyote with something bloody in its mouth, trotting along in the snow.

Out of nowhere, a bald eagles swoops in, snatches the carcass out of the coyote’s mouth, and zooms away.

A rough timeline of the bald eagle’s presence in Connecticut runs thus:

Bald eagles were common in the colonial and early Republic, and were designated as the national bird in 1782.

By the 1940s bald eagles were in steep decline, and in the 1950s there were none in the state.

By the 1960s, there were only 400 or so bald eagles in the Lower 48 states.

The culprits were increased human development and subsequent habitat disturbance and loss, and the widespread use of the  pesticide DDT, Hess said.

DDT resulted in thinning eggshells, and increased mortality of eagle chicks.

DDT was banned in Connecticut in 1969 and in the U.S. in 1972.

The federal Endangered Species List and complementary legislation and enforcement began in 1973.

“Without the bald eagle in trouble, I’m not sure we’d have an endangered species list,” said Hess.

The bald eagles population has since rebounded in the state, from 20 in 1979 to 176 in 2022.

The chances of seeing a bald eagle in Connecticut are good, Hess said. The ideal bald eagle home is a big tree located within a half mile of a body of water.

“That’s most of Connecticut.”

Bald eagles have made a comeback in Connecticut. This bald eagle was photographed in Kent near the Housatonic River. Photo by Lans Christensen