BALD EAGLES AND MAKING IT OFFICIAL

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An immature bald eagle on a utility pole in Marathon. MARK HEDDEN/Keys Weekly

There have been 5 of us within the automobile – my sister Karen, my brother-in-law Lee, and their pals Kathy and Charles. We’d been up on Large Pine Key deer and gators and whatnot, and had been now heading south to get them again to their (small) cruise ship at Mallory Dock.

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

Pelicans had been gliding alongside the bridges, simply out of arm’s size for those who had been standing on the railing, browsing the swells and updrafts brought on by the wind hitting the bridges, the birds shifting virtually as quick because the vehicles. It’s a phenomenon that makes me giddy each time I see it. 

On the Kemp Channel Bridge there was one other fowl simply off to the precise. We had been doing about 50; it was in all probability doing 40, so it was a fast look – perhaps a second or two – as we overtook it and handed. Nevertheless it wasn’t a pelican. It was barely mottled, largely brown, with a darkish, flesh-tearing invoice and wings that prolonged out flat as two ironing boards. Just about everybody within the automobile knew what it was on the similar time – a bald eagle.

Bald eagles take 4 years to develop into their grownup plumage, once they have the white tail, in addition to the white head that accounts for the “bald” a part of their title. This fowl had neither of these traits. Judging by the quantity of pale mottling, I’d guess it was someplace between its first and second yr, although I used to be driving and felt a powerful requirement to maintain the automobile within the lane, so I wasn’t completely certain.

This was solely per week or two after Joe Biden had signed a regulation declaring the bald eagle the official fowl of the USA, ending up paperwork that had been uncared for for two-and-a-half centuries and prompting most People to say, “What? It wasn’t already?” It was like discovering out pals who’d been collectively for 30 years, and who you thought had been married all alongside, had solely just lately really acquired married so one in all them may get well being care or a visa or one thing. 

Bald eagles have lengthy been thought of the nationwide fowl of the USA, symbols of patriotism, freedom and a variety of different not-fully-defined ideas. 

When the primary Europeans landed in North America there have been considered about 500,000 bald eagles. The primary one was described for science by Carl Linnaeus in 1766, although he lived in Sweden and it’s arduous to search out any document of how he obtained the specimen.  

The fowl was designated because the nationwide emblem of the USA on June 2, 1782 in the course of the Second Continental Congress, and at about the identical time was added to the Nice Seal, also called the official seal of the USA, carrying a protect, clutching an olive department in a single talon, arrows within the different, and holding a waving banner in its invoice declaring, “E pluribus unum.”

Official designations don’t at all times imply love, although. Ben Franklin famously dedicated a troll for the ages when he facetiously argued in opposition to the bald eagle as a logo for the burgeoning nation as a result of the species had “low ethical character” and was “a rank coward.”

Issues acquired a bit of extra hardcore in Alaska, the place the species was considerable and thought of to prey excessively on salmon shares and fox farms. In 1917 the Alaska Territorial Authority provided a $.50-a-head bounty on bald eagles, which resulted in payouts for the killing of 120,195 eagles, and an untold variety of them that had been shot and never recovered. The bounties continued for 35 years, growing to $2 a head by 1949, three years earlier than the payouts ended as a consequence of federal regulation and Alaska getting near becoming a member of the union.

Over the subsequent two centuries within the decrease 48 states, habitat loss, harassment, looking and pesticides similar to DDT brought on their populations to crash. In 1940 the Nationwide Emblem Act was signed into regulation, making it unlawful to hunt them or to promote them both alive or useless. 

It didn’t cease their decline. By 1963, there have been solely 487 identified nesting pairs of bald eagles within the decrease 48. The Endangered Species Act of 1966, the banning of DDT for agricultural use and captive breeding helped flip issues round, and the inhabitants started to rebound within the Eighties. In 2007, they had been taken off the Endangered Species Checklist. There are at present considered a bit of over 300,000 bald eagles of their pure vary. They’re one of many nice success tales of American conservation.

It’s tempting to assume that not one of the symbolism connected to bald eagles issues to them. I imply, I’m fairly certain eagles don’t fly round all day, grabbing fish from ponds, raiding rubbish dumps, stealing meals from different birds, imbued with a way of emblematic significance. However the symbolism does matter in a really sensible sense, as a result of it’s honest to marvel how a lot of a restoration success story they might be in the event that they weren’t thought of residing representatives of democracy and freedom, nevertheless you outline these ideas.

I don’t assume there are lots of folks on this nation who couldn’t establish a bald eagle on sight. 

There are just a few breeding pairs of them within the Keys. I’d guess between 10 and 20 pairs, however I don’t have any arduous information. I see them most recurrently driving the 18 Mile Stretch. However I additionally see them at random occasions within the Decrease Keys – out on the boat, driving by means of the cemetery, strolling round at Fort Zach. Currently I’ve heard reviews of 1 coming into the ponds on the Key West Golf Course on Inventory Island. 

I like the truth that it’s form of pointless to exit and search for them, however generally, even for those who haven’t considered them for some time, one will simply pop again up into your life.

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