Eagle Eyed
From Struggling Populations to National Celebrities: The Comeback of SoCal Bald Eagles
On Azusa Ave, a few minutes north of “The Canyon City” of Azusa, California, two disheveled pine trees tower above the San Gabriel reservoir. They are part of a hilltop that the U.S. Forest Service is fencing off from visitors through the end of June. The reason for the protection becomes clear when you peer up into the trees. In one of them, two distinctive white heads, golden yellow beaks and claws, and brown plumage perch mightily, surveying their territory. You’re looking at an active bald eagle nest, right here in the heart of the San Gabriel Valley.
The eagles may not look very big from afar, but males have a six-foot wingspan while females are even larger, with wing spans up to eight feet so they can fit eaglets under waterproof feathers during storms. In the other tree, in a nest made of layers of carefully placed sticks that would comfortably fit a human, sits a black and fuzzy eaglet, already about the size of its parents. Maybe not as mighty looking, but by the time they’re five years old, they too will have the iconic feathers.
Even through gloomy fog and cloudy binoculars, it is a mesmerizing sight to see the bald eagle family, only 20 miles from Whittier College. This family of eagles, so close to home, is a welcome sight because it wasn’t long ago that our nation’s symbol, the bald eagle, was nowhere to be found in California.
The infamous pesticide DDT decimated Southern California’s eagle populations in the 1960s. But after restoration efforts in the 1980s on the Channel Islands, the local population grew slowly but steadily. Recently, eagles have been spotted at Irvine Lake, Santa Ana River, Big Bear Valley, as well as these in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains.
With the combination of more photos and close-up nest cams, we have been able to get a glimpse into their lives, seeing their different personalities and all the adversaries they fight in this ever-changing world. They don’t know it, but they are leading a new outlook on conservation and life.
According to Dr. Myra Finkelstein, Professor of Microbiology & Environmental Toxicology at UC Santa Cruz, DDT was seen as a miracle product when it was first introduced as a pesticide. It was used for controlling crop pests, killing mosquitos, and for commercial use in people’s homes. The Environmental Protection Agency reports a total of 1.35 billion pounds of DDT was used in the United States before its ban in 1972.
A 2021 Institute for Wildlife Studies report by Peter B. Sharpe and David K. Garcelon noted that between 1947 and 1961, an estimated 37 to 53 million liters of DDT-contaminated acid sludge was dumped into the ocean 10 miles from Catalina Island, along with an estimated 1,800 tons of DDT dumped offshore of the Palos Verdes Peninsula. According to Finkelstein, although DDT itself is not acutely toxic if you ingest it, it rapidly breaks down into a compound called DDE, a by-product that is persistent in the environment.
DDE can stay in the environment for decades. This build up DDE made its way into the food chain, into fish, and into eagles. Sharpe says that DDE is closely correlated to the reductions of eggshell thickness and bald eagle reproductive capacity. It makes the eggshells so thin that the eggs collapse and are not able to survive. His research suggests this is the likely cause of the decrease in eagle populations that led to bald eagles being placed on the California Endangered Species list in 1971.
By the 1980s, efforts to restore the eagle populations were underway. Sharpe worked with the Institute for Wildlife Studies with their restoration efforts. “Early on we would actually have to go the nest when the eggs were laid, remove the eggs, put in fake eggs for the adults to sit on and incubate, attempt to hatch those eggs and get healthy chicks, bring the chicks back to the nest, remove the fake eggs, put the chicks in and the adults would raise them from there,” says Sharpe, when reached by phone.
Sharpe grew up in Illinois and remembers backpacking and camping in Colorado, Montana, and Arizona in the summers. His grandparents had a farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Georgia where he spent a lot of time outside. As a result of being close to nature, he was inspired to pursue biology and conservation.
While working on the comeback of local bald eagles, Sharpe sometimes had to hang from a helicopter to reach some of the nests, holding a case of fake eggs, ready to swap them with the real eggs. Varying restoration efforts to kickstart the comeback of bald eagles on the islands went on from 1980 to 2004.
Since 2006, bald eagles on the Catalina Islands have been able to hatch most of their eggs on their own. According to the National Park Service, as of 2013 there were five breeding pairs on Santa Cruz Island, two on Santa Rosa, one on Anacapa, and over 40 bald eagles in the northern Channel Islands. You can watch some of the Channel Island nest cams here.
Presently, bald eagles are being found in areas that typically don’t have eagles. Sandy Steers, executive director of Friends of Big Bear Valley, says that the first eaglet seen in Big Bear was spotted by a third grader in 2012. Growing up in Indiana, Steers remembers always loving nature and the outdoors. She recalls camping at Lake Eerie and going mushroom hunting. Sharpe grew up in Illinois and remembers backpacking and camping in Colorado, Montana, and Arizona in the summers. Growing up in Indiana, Steers remembers always loving nature and the outdoors. She recalls camping at Lake Eerie and going mushroom hunting.
Now, she watches Jackie, believed to be the first eaglet hatched in Big Bear, who is now a celebrity eagle. She was first spotted by a third grader. In 2012, though, the only way to see the nest was through a scope half of a mile away. Then, in October of 2015, a solar powered camera was installed near the nest and watching the eagle couple got much easier. According to Friends of Big Bear Valley, Jackie nests with her partner Shadow in the same nest that she was born in.
Jackie and Shadow have become an internet sensation and thousands of people watch their nest cam during the hatching season.
Steers says that it has been a revelation to see how different Jackie and Shadow are. They have different preferences and react to circumstances differently. Their behaviors change based on what is happening around them. “It’s obvious they learn as they grow,” she says.
When Shadow brings a fish for Jackie, it tends to not have a head, suggesting that the head is his favorite meal. Sometimes Jackie has to bite Shadow’s beak to get him to move off the eggs in the nest. This year, when Jackie and Shadow’s eggs didn’t hatch, she noticed that Shadow stopped doing his daily ritual of rearranging sticks in the nest for a while after ravens took their eggs. Additionally, Jackie tends to be ready to give up on the eggs sooner than Shadow, so Shadow will sleep on the eggs a few more days after Jackie stops. According to Friends of Big Bear Valley, Jackie has had three fledging eaglets, one in 2018, 2019, and 2022 but has had no success the past couple years.
“It can be sort of a success story, even though it’s still a problem.” says Finkelstein.
It’s not completely certain why the partners are not having successful hatches or fledglings in recent years. “It could be the cold,” says Sharpe. Although adult bald eagles are built for extreme weather conditions with their waterproof plumage, keeping eggs or newly hatched chicks warm and dry is a challenge. “A potential cause could also be the elevation,” says Steers.
Most of the time eagles are not found at such high elevations. The hatching rate of bald eagles is not high even without these additional challenges, says Sharpe — about a 50-percent chance — and out of those, only half make it to fledging.
According to Sharpe, the threats Southern California eagles face today include being hit by cars, electrocution, and lead poisoning from bullets in places where hunting is prevalent. Scavenging species clean up carcasses from the land all the time, “but if that carcass is full of bits of lead from using lead-based ammunition, then the scavengers can be poisoned and die from that lead exposure,” says Finkelstein.
In a recent study, researchers found that from the 1000+ bald eagles they tested across 38 states, 46–47 percent of the eagles had chronic lead poisoning.
DDT doesn’t seem to be a threat to eagle populations today. “Because most of the eagles are hatching their own eggs, it doesn’t seem to be concentrated enough in the food chain right now to have a real visible impact,” says Sharpe. But he does say the contamination is spreading out, and is found from the South of San Diego to Point of Conception. Furthermore, Sharpe has noticed DDT can still build up to an unhealthy level in older birds, preventing them from reproducing successfully. Despite current threats, “It can be sort of a success story, even though it’s still a problem.” says Finkelstein.
If we all can be a little closer to nature, such as watching nest cams of the once neglected bald eagle of Southern California, we can gain a new wonder and love for wilderness. Learning about wildlife gives people the desire to conserve them. As Aldo Leopold puts it in A Sand County Almanac, “Only those able to see the pageant of evolution can be expected to value its theater, or its outstanding achievement…”.
