WILD THINGS: BALD EAGLES AND MAKING IT OFFICIAL

a black bird perched on top of a power pole
An immature bald eagle on a utility pole in Marathon. MARK HEDDEN/Keys Weekly

There were five of us in the car – my sister Karen, my brother-in-law Lee, and their friends Kathy and Charles. We’d been up on Big Pine looking at Key deer and gators and whatnot, and were now heading south to get them back to their (small) cruise ship at Mallory Dock.

It was windy. Blow-your-hat-off windy. Whitecaps-on-the-water windy. 

Pelicans were gliding alongside the bridges, just out of arm’s length if you were standing on the railing, surfing the swells and updrafts caused by the wind hitting the bridges, the birds moving almost as fast as the cars. It’s a phenomenon that makes me giddy every time I see it. 

On the Kemp Channel Bridge there was another bird just off to the right. We were doing about 50; it was probably doing 40, so it was a quick look – maybe a second or two – as we overtook it and passed. But it wasn’t a pelican. It was slightly mottled, mostly brown, with a dark, flesh-tearing bill and wings that extended out flat as two ironing boards. Pretty much everyone in the car knew what it was at the same time – a bald eagle.

Bald eagles take four years to grow into their adult plumage, when they have the white tail, as well as the white head that accounts for the “bald” part of their name. This bird had neither of those characteristics. Judging by the amount of pale mottling, I’d guess it was somewhere between its first and second year, though I was driving and felt a strong requirement to keep the car in the lane, so I wasn’t totally sure.

This was only a week or two after Joe Biden had signed a law declaring the bald eagle the official bird of the United States, finishing up paperwork that had been neglected for two-and-a-half centuries and prompting most Americans to say, “What? It wasn’t already?” It was like finding out friends who’d been together for 30 years, and who you thought were married all along, had only recently actually got married so one of them could get health care or a visa or something. 

Bald eagles have long been considered the national bird of the United States, symbols of patriotism, freedom and a lot of other not-fully-defined concepts. 

When the first Europeans landed in North America there were thought to be about 500,000 bald eagles. The first one was described for science by Carl Linnaeus in 1766, though he lived in Sweden and it’s hard to find any record of how he obtained the specimen.  

The bird was designated as the national emblem of the United States on June 2, 1782 during the Second Continental Congress, and at about the same time was added to the Great Seal, also known as the official seal of the United States, wearing a shield, clutching an olive branch in one talon, arrows in the other, and holding a waving banner in its bill declaring, “E pluribus unum.”

Official designations don’t always mean love, though. Ben Franklin famously committed a troll for the ages when he facetiously argued against the bald eagle as a symbol for the burgeoning nation because the species had “low moral character” and was “a rank coward.”

Things got a little more hardcore in Alaska, where the species was abundant and considered to prey excessively on salmon stocks and fox farms. In 1917 the Alaska Territorial Authority offered a $.50-a-head bounty on bald eagles, which resulted in payouts for the killing of 120,195 eagles, and an untold number of them that were shot and not recovered. The bounties continued for 35 years, increasing to $2 a head by 1949, three years before the payouts ended due to federal law and Alaska getting close to joining the union.

Over the next two centuries in the lower 48 states, habitat loss, harassment, hunting and pesticides such as DDT caused their populations to crash. In 1940 the National Emblem Act was signed into law, making it illegal to hunt them or to sell them either alive or dead. 

It did not stop their decline. By 1963, there were only 487 known nesting pairs of bald eagles in the lower 48. The Endangered Species Act of 1966, the banning of DDT for agricultural use and captive breeding helped turn things around, and the population began to rebound in the 1980s. In 2007, they were taken off the Endangered Species List. There are currently thought to be a little over 300,000 bald eagles in their natural range. They are one of the great success stories of American conservation.

It is tempting to think that none of the symbolism attached to bald eagles matters to them. I mean, I am quite sure eagles don’t fly around all day, grabbing fish from ponds, raiding garbage dumps, stealing food from other birds, imbued with a sense of emblematic importance. But the symbolism does matter in a very practical sense, because it is fair to wonder how much of a recovery success story they would be if they weren’t considered living representatives of democracy and freedom, however you define those concepts.

I don’t think there are many people in this country who could not identify a bald eagle on sight. 

There are a few breeding pairs of them in the Keys. I’d guess between 10 and 20 pairs, but I don’t have any hard data. I see them most regularly driving the 18 Mile Stretch. But I also see them at random times in the Lower Keys – out on the boat, riding through the cemetery, walking around at Fort Zach. Lately I’ve heard reports of one coming into the ponds at the Key West Golf Course on Stock Island. 

I like the fact that it is kind of pointless to go out and look for them, but sometimes, even if you haven’t thought about them for a while, one will just pop back up into your life.

Mark Hedden
Mark Hedden is a photographer, writer, and semi-professional birdwatcher. He has lived in Key West for more than 25 years and may no longer be employable in the real world. He is also executive director of the Florida Keys Audubon Society.