Althouse: We've been seeing so many bald eagles around here.

January 8, 2019

We've been seeing so many bald eagles around here.

And here's a news report on the subject: "Bald eagle nests in Wisconsin for 2018 tops record."

35 comments:

bagoh20 said...: It's because Wisconsin went for Trump. The count will probably shrink after the 2018 governor's race is factored in.; 1/8/19, 6:11 PM
Charlie Currie said...: Is there a lack of windfarms in your area? They all get sliced and diced out west.; 1/8/19, 6:11 PM
Yancey Ward said...: I don't think I have seen one. I have seen a few golden eagles in CT, including a really good close up of one on the campus where I used to work in Ridgefield CT- they would winter on site. Truly magnificent birds.; 1/8/19, 6:12 PM
Tommy Duncan said...: Bald eagles congregate around open water to scavenge for dead or dying fish. Has the warm weather created open water on the lakes in Madison?; 1/8/19, 6:13 PM
rehajm said...: We have one nest near the house. A few years ago they set up camp on a neighbors vacant lot, just as the neighbors were going to build a house. Oops.; 1/8/19, 6:14 PM
bagoh20 said...: Maybe they are just regular eagles that are living longer.; 1/8/19, 6:16 PM
Bob Boyd said...: I got a really good look at a Northern Pygmy Owl last week in daylight from about 20 feet away. It was only about the size of my fist. They have false eyes on the back of their heads.; 1/8/19, 6:23 PM
Howard said...: Thank all those millions of dead Africans who succummed to a lack of DDT.; 1/8/19, 6:25 PM
stevew said...: We have them here in MA. I'm on the north side Boston up towards the NH seacoast and have seen them on the wing around the Merrimack River. I was shocked, in a what the heck was that way, the first time I saw one. They are so much larger than the other predatory birds (hawks) around here.; 1/8/19, 6:28 PM
Rabel said...: They're all over the place nowadays. There's a pair living near me here in the mid-south. Never saw one before about two years ago.

May have to put them on the menu eventually. Tastes like freedom.; 1/8/19, 6:29 PM
alanc709 said...: "Thank all those millions of dead Africans who succummed to a lack of DDT." Don't forget all the other tropical populations who get malaria in increased numbers, thanks to the lunatics of the environmental movement. Banning DDT killed millions.; 1/8/19, 6:35 PM
Lucien said...: Why don’t all those tropical countries build their own chemical plants to make DDT? Is it because they can’t figure out the secret recipe, or are they afraid of lawsuits?; 1/8/19, 6:51 PM
rehajm said...: Yesterday I saw an auld beagle.; 1/8/19, 6:53 PM
Big Mike said...: The house where Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring is in the Colesville area of Silver Spring, a suburb of Washington, DC. If you think that the similarity between the title of the book and the location where she lived is not coincidence, well, others were there before you. I was really upset to discover that Silent Spring was junk science from end to end. This web site has the details.

Money quote: "10.Rachel Carson sounded the initial alarm against DDT, but represented the science of DDT erroneously in her 1962 book Silent Spring. Carson wrote 'Dr. DeWitt’s now classic experiments [on quail and pheasants] have now established the fact that exposure to DDT, even when doing no observable harm to the birds, may seriously affect reproduction. Quail into whose diet DDT was introduced throughout the breeding season survived and even produced normal numbers of fertile eggs. But few of the eggs hatched.'

DeWitt’s 1956 article (in Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry) actually yielded a very different conclusion. Quail were fed 200 parts per million of DDT in all of their food throughout the breeding season. DeWitt reports that 80% of their eggs hatched, compared with the 'control' birds which hatched 83.9% of their eggs. Carson also omitted mention of DeWitt’s report that 'control' pheasants hatched only 57 percent of their eggs, while those that were fed high levels of DDT in all of their food for an entire year hatched more than 80% of their eggs."; 1/8/19, 6:59 PM
ga6 said...: but but but; 1/8/19, 7:10 PM
BUMBLE BEE said...: They taste a lot like condors...; 1/8/19, 7:12 PM
BUMBLE BEE said...: Carson's highly touted results have never been repeated. Science demands repetition of result.; 1/8/19, 7:15 PM
iowan2 said...: I was really upset to discover that Silent Spring was junk science from end to end. This web site has the details.

All the enviromental scares are fake. ALL of them. I have been living the environmental scam artist since I was old enough to pay attention. DDT, atrazine, Lasso, Bladex, Nitrates, etc. I could on and on. The lies are so well ingrained, degreed biologist buy into it. In Iowa, the last nesting pair of Bald Eagles were in 1917. I've pointed that fact out to Natural Resource officers, they refuse to listen. Ignoring the declining Bald Eagle populations, decades before DDT was invented.; 1/8/19, 7:49 PM
Gordon Scott said...: The Minnesota DNR estimates there's about 9800 breeding pairs in Minnesota now. They've stopped counting. They are nesting inside Minneapolis and St Paul. Outstate it is barely remarkable to see them. If there is open water in the winter, some will stay year round.; 1/8/19, 7:59 PM
SteveBrooklineMA said...: I don’t even remember seeing many hawks when I was growing up. Now I see them all the time along the freeway. I see a lot of herons, cranes, vultures, turkeys, and the occasional bald eagle here in Madison. We must be doing something right with the environment.; 1/8/19, 8:13 PM
Fritz said...: Lots of ‘em around here. The Chesapeake Bay is a net exporter of Bald Eagles.; 1/8/19, 8:13 PM
gilbar said...: i see bald eagles in NE iowa, Every time i go trout fishing (well, every time i drive anywhere to trout fish; the Echo Valley state park in West Union only has SOME bald eagles).

I used to only see them in the winter; now i see LOTS more in the winter, but i see them Year round. They're Murders! They not only don't practice catch and release, they don't even have trout stamps; HELL! i'll bet some of them don't even have regular fishing licenses; 1/8/19, 8:18 PM
traditionalguy said...: War Eagle.; 1/8/19, 8:29 PM
Sprezzatura said...: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc-i242rmfU; 1/8/19, 9:09 PM
Heartless Aztec said...: Lots of Bald Eagles in the Jacksonville area. A small family lives near my sailboat dock on Julington Creek. Osprey too. We have an Osprey that feeds on mullet between the waves while we're surfing.; 1/8/19, 10:11 PM
Josephbleau said...: I Kayak on the Kankakee River all year long and Bald Eagles are always diving to the surface eating carp. Fat, not endangered.; 1/8/19, 10:43 PM
Trumpit said...: All wildlife should be on the endangered species list as far as I'm concerned. Take bald eagles off the list and uncouth, remorseless hunters will gleefully shoot them for fun, and wipe them out as fast as they can. There won't be a birdbath left untargeted; there'll be a bloodbath for sure.; 1/8/19, 11:26 PM
Hey Skipper said...: Is there nothing AGW can't do?; 1/9/19, 2:30 AM
Mr. Forward said...: Ever see a bald Eagle with a combover?; 1/9/19, 4:42 AM
Nina said...: And yet when DDT was banned, the Bald Eagles and Ospreys came back.; 1/9/19, 5:18 AM
Unknown said...: اجاره خودرو

اجاره اتوبوس; 1/9/19, 6:11 AM
ELC said...: I live in a narrow river valley in southwestern Pennsylvania, about 35 miles south of Pittsburgh. Bald eagles have been sighted fairly often here the past year or so, which I can't recall happening previously.

Hawks and turkey vultures are fairly common now, also a change from the past. The other day, a neighbor posted a picture to Facebook of a hawk perched on the deck of his backyard pool, keeping watch, apparently, on the nearby birdfeeder.

Folks around here generally attribute the increase in large birds to the collapse of the steel industry, making for a cleaner local environment. But I don't know how right that is.; 1/9/19, 7:40 AM
Tina Trent said...: Hawks and eagles are benefitting in some places by power companies building platforms for them along utility lines. Creating habitats for them is pretty easy.

None of this is good news for cats and Chihuahuas.; 1/9/19, 7:45 AM
Maillard Reactionary said...: A bald eagle flew over my car yesterday on my way home from the range. I see them around here fairly regularly (southern NJ, near the Pinelands). The highways provide a smorgasbord of freshly killed wildlife for them and the other raptors (pressed rabbit, anyone?).

Regarding turkeys, they are a plague upon the land, often congregating by the dozens in residential areas and taking quite the attitude with humans. Last year a coven of them dug up the soil around my foundation plantings, looking for bugs. They seem to be aware of the no-discharge ordinance in this town and looked annoyed and sullen when I encouraged them to Move On.; 1/9/19, 8:36 AM
RobinGoodfellow said...: Blogger Nina said...
And yet when DDT was banned, the Bald Eagles and Ospreys came back.

And yet when DDT was banned, US inflation (which was trending downward) cake back!

Correlation does not prove causation.; 1/10/19, 5:36 PM