Even before reaching the wide-open marsh that
overlooks the Palmer River in Barrington, Charles Clarkson hears the
high-pitched squeaky call of an adult bald eagle, a surprisingly weak sound for
such a majestic bird. But when Clarkson emerges from the forest and glances
around, he sees the bird disappear around a bend. His disappointment at missing
out on a closeup look at the bird doesn’t last long though.
He knows the bird will be back soon to feed its
lone chick, which he finds perched on the edge of a massive stick nest about
three-quarters of the way up a large pine tree. The young bird, mostly brown
but with a few scattered white feathers on its chest and wings, will not grow
the iconic white head and tail of its parents for five years. But it still
looks to be a powerful creature, nearly full-grown despite being just three
months old and unable to fly.
According to Clarkson, an
ornithologist at the University of Rhode Island who is coordinating a five-year
census of breeding birds in the state, the nest site is in an ideal location
for the eagles. It provides the adult birds with a clear view of their feeding
grounds in the river while also hiding the young birds from nest predators like
great horned owls.
Clarkson’s objective for the day is
to document eagle nest locations, collect vegetation data to create habitat maps
of the sites, and get a head count of nestlings. So he sets up a
spotting scope
to get a clear look into the nest, takes pictures and makes notes about the
habitat in the vicinity, and uses a GPS device to confirm the precise nest
location. As he does so, he points out several osprey – fish-eating hawks that
are seemingly abundant along Rhode Island’s coastline – soaring in the distance
and landing on one of three visible nesting poles. Then the adult eagle swoops
back into view, circles its nest briefly, and disappears again.
 |
| Bald eagle (Peter Green) |
“It seems to be put off by our
presence,” Clarkson says to Catherine Boisseau, a member of the board of the
Barrington Land Trust, which owns the property where the eagle nest is located.
“It was bee-lining to the nest, but then saw us and veered off. My motto is the
less impact we have the better, so we should head out.”
Half an hour later, Clarkson pulls
his Jeep onto the shoulder of a road in East Providence to collect similar data
about an eagle nest in another pine tree, this one on a golf course. On first
glance, the nest looks empty, and part of the branch that supports the nest
appears to have recently broken off and lay at the base of the tree. It’s a
worrisome sign, since eagle nests can be five or six feet across and weigh
hundreds of pounds, and the young eaglet would not survive outside of its nest
at such a young age. No adult eagles are in sight, but Clarkson walks down the
road to view the nest from a different angle, where he can barely see that the
young bird remains alert in the nest.
Rhode Island was home to six pairs
of nesting bald eagles in the spring and summer of 2019. Several others
exhibited breeding behavior but are not known to have laid eggs, and dozens
more spent at least part of the winter in the state. As many as 10 eagles have
been observed together on the Seekonk River in Providence in winter, and
additional birds can be found almost anywhere open water remains in January and
February.
The eagles, along with peregrine
falcons and osprey, have made a dramatic comeback in the state after facing
near extinction due to the effects of DDT, an insecticide used from the 1940s to
the 1970s that caused the birds’ egg shells to become so thin that they broke
when the birds tried to incubate them. It led to almost complete reproductive
failure in much of the country for all three species.
“DDT is an organochlorine, a type of
chemical with a very high persistence in the environment,” explains Clarkson. “When
it gets on insects and those insects are consumed by higher trophic levels –
first fish and then eagles, for instance – it bioaccumulates and gets stored in
their fatty tissues. It makes the mobilization of calcium difficult, which
translated into a thinning egg shell that made it impossible for large-bodied
birds to support their weight on their eggs. Multiple breeding seasons of
nesting failure led to dramatic population declines.”
The pesticide was banned in 1972,
and after a long absence, the birds are back in Rhode Island and their
populations are growing at a remarkable rate.
Based on historic records maintained
by Rachel Farrell, a member of the Rhode Island Avian Records Committee, bald
eagles were not known to nest in Rhode Island in the 1900s, even before the use
of DDT, but they were regularly observed in winter until the late 1950s. The
first record of an eagle nest in the state, on an island in the Scituate
Reservoir, was in 2003.
“Most likely what we’re seeing now
is that the populations in states around us are growing at such a rate that
immature birds are engaging in exploratory flights looking for new habitat and
new territories,” says Clarkson. “They’re finding their way to Rhode Island and
deeming it suitable for nesting.”
The
state’s first breeding eagles originated from nests in Massachusetts, where the
breeding population had disappeared by 1905 due largely to... Continue reading the rest of this article in the December 2019 issue of Rhode Island Monthly.
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