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A bald eagle flies above the Rappahannock River in Westmoreland County - |
BY FRANK DELANO
The economy may have slowed summer tourism, but not for bald eagles on the Potomac.
Tidal, fresh-water areas of the river are packed this summer with eagles. Many of them are summer visitors from Florida and other southern states, says Jeff Cooper, a wildlife biologist with the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.
Cooper and his colleagues counted 488 eagles in a two-day survey last month on the river between the U.S. 301 bridge in King George County and Fort Belvoir in Fairfax County. A similar survey found 344 last year.
"This is the greatest number of bald eagles ever documented, summer or winter, within the six known eagle concentration areas in the Chesapeake Bay region," Cooper said.
The Rappahannock River from Tappahannock to Port Royal is another concentration area. But last month's count of 135 eagles was "quite low" because of muddy water, Cooper said.
"The Rappahannock is a better winter area for eagles with just shy of 400 birds. The Potomac is good in both winter and summer," he said.
In addition to the bay region's native population, eagles from southern states migrate to the bay in summer and eagles from northern regions migrate to the bay in winter. Eagles from the Chesapeake migrate north and south.
Food is the reason, said Cooper.
Cooper said eagles are "opportunistic feeders" that eat most anything--fish, gulls, waterfowl, road kill and other carrion. He uses deer carcasses found on roadsides to bait and trap eagles for banding in winter.
This year, he hopes the VDGIF can find funds to buy a few satellite tracking devices for a few local eagles.
But the GPS trackers are expensive. Made by North Star Science and Technology LLC in King George County, the two-ounce devices cost about $2,500 each, plus a $175 per month service fee to plot the birds' travels, Cooper said.
The Center for Conservation Biology at the College of William & Mary, which works with VDGIF on the eagle counts, has attached the trackers to 60 eagles. One eagle was tracked to New Brunswick, Canada, soon after leaving its nest in the Chesapeake Bay area, Cooper said.
Cooper said he wants to use the trackers to find out where local eagles are at midnight. He said he has seen as many as 50 eagles at a communal roosting site on Potomac Creek. He hopes to find--and protect--other big eagle roosts in the region.
Eagles once faced extinction from effects of the use of DDT. The banning of the insecticide in 1972 was the beginning of a remarkable comeback. Last year, the big birds were removed from the national list of endangered species.
But eagles are still protected by the U.S. Bald Eagle
"People and eagles like to be in the same place looking at the water," he said. In his eight years of surveying eagles, Cooper has seen a "systematic chipping away" of eagle habitat by new waterfront homes and subdivisions.
The economic downturn has temporarily slowed waterfront development, he said. An upturn in the economy might be bad news for the birds.
"But I'm all for a better economy," he said. "We can do much more conservation when the economy is good."
Frank Delano: 804/761-4300
Email: fpdelano@gmail.com
