Cheshire Cat Photo Blog(...said the Cat: 'we're all mad here....')

According to Doug Bell, a wildlife biologist with the East Bay Regional Park District, there WERE no bald eagle nests in the Bay Area when he became interested in raptors in 1965! Eagle habitat had been threatened and damaged by development, and the pesticide DDT weakened the egg shells of eagles and other birds.

Things are different now.

A pair of young bald eagles new nest this year, in a stand of eucalyptus trees overlooking Bass Cove of Lake Chabot in Anthony Chabot Regional Park. A bald eaglet hatched, the first in modern times near Lake Chabot in Castro Valley.

Meanwhile, other nests have been established by pairs of bald eagles in the region, according to the California Department of Fish and Game, including San Pablo Reservoir near Orinda, Calaveras Reservoir on the edge of Santa Clara and Alameda counties, Lake Berryessa in Napa County, Del Valle Reservoir near Livermore, San Antonio Reservoir south of Sunol, and Lake Sonoma in Sonoma County!

In ANOTHER “first” this year, bald eagles produced young at the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge!

As with a lot of biology, there were several failures:

In the spring, bald eagle pairs made failed attempts to build the first nests in at least many decades in San Mateo and Santa Cruz counties — at Crystal Springs Reservoir and at Pinto Reservoir near Watsonville.

Experts said the attempt was progress, as eagle pairs often strike out at a nest site for one or two years before producing young.

Bald eagles are the third largest birds flying over the U.S., after the California condor and the golden eagle. Bald eagles weight 10-14 pounds and have wingspans of 72 to 90 inches!

Although there are more than 7 million people in the Bay Area, the area has what bald eagles want: big trees for nesting, open space, and reservoirs for fishing. The eagle’s recovery has been aided by pesticide regulation, protection of habitat, and the release of chicks bred in captivity. According to the Santa Cruz Sentinel:

State and federal agencies don’t have a concrete estimate for nesting pairs in California; tracking and study funds have shrunk since the birds were removed from the federal endangered species list in 2007. But anecdotal evidence suggests numbers have grown since 2007, when there were more than an estimated 200 nests, said Cari Battistone, a state Fish and Game scientist.

In 1963, there were only 417 known nests in the lower 48 states, a fraction of the more than 10,000 nests now, federal wildlife officials estimate. Alaska, with its vast open lands and rivers and fewer humans, has 50,000 to 70,000 eagles.

Although there are still obstacles for bald eagles (and humans who care about them) to overcome, among them: electrocution by power lines, pesticide poisoning, wind turbine accidents, lead poisoning from bullet fragments in scavenged animals, automobile strikes, and harassment by humans, there is a lot of reason for optimism.

“We have the perfect situation for them with reservoirs surrounded by protected watershed,” said Jim Smith, a biologist for the East Bay Municipal Utility District. “We leave them alone.”

See the Santa Cruz Sentinel article for a video and photographic slides of the Lake Chabot bald eagles.

-Bill at

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