An Affair of the Heart and Feather

Lawrence Magazine 2011–2012 Story of the Year

Story by Julie Tollefson

For more than two decades, an avian love story has played out in the skies over Clinton Lake.

In 1989, a pair of bald eagles set up housekeeping at the lake, joined before long by two fuzzy babies. In the words of scientists, mom and dad became the first historically documented pair of bald eagles to successfully raise young since the turn of the century in Kansas.

For the rest of us non-scientists, they’re known as the first nesting pair of bald eagles to settle in our state.

“There’s nothing more beautiful than eagles in the area,” says Marty Birrell, nature education supervisor at Prairie Park Nature Center and a long-time observer for the nesting territory. “That first pair has a real sentimental place for everybody who’s been involved with them.”

The eagle couple’s first year was marred by tragedy when the female disappeared shortly after their eaglets hatched, a development that could have had dire consequences for their young. Bald eagle pairs generally share the responsibility for caring for their offspring, with one eagle staying in the nest to protect the chicks as the other forages for food. Without his mate, the full burden of childcare fell squarely on the male.

“The male raised those chicks on his own, which was remarkable and extraordinarily touching,” says Birrell.

To the delight of area bird watchers, the male returned to his Clinton Lake home the next year, bringing a new mate and the beginning of a dynasty among Kansas bald eagles.

Renewing their vows

Barring death or other misfortune, bald eagle pairs will remain together for life, with life expectancy of up to 30 years in the wild and 50 in captivity. In the late fall or early winter, before caring for newly hatched eaglets requires all of their time and energy, eagle couples renew their commitment to each other by repeating the same ritualized behaviors they performed as young eagles first establishing their “pair bond.” If they were human, we might say they were renewing their wedding vows.

The most stunning of these rituals is a breathtaking aerial maneuver in which the eagles soar up in the sky, grasp talons, and then spin around and around as they hurtle towards the ground.

Biologists such as Birrell have a description for this—“very cool.”

Each eagle pair has its own personality. Some keep neat nests; others are less concerned by clutter. Some sit side-by-side on branches for long periods of time; others spend more time apart.

Regardless of nesting style, a typical eagle pair will usually hatch 2-3 nestlings each season. And once the nestlings hatch, both adult eagles become devoted to finding enough food to satisfy their growing family.

Ed and Cynthia Shaw, both longtime members of the Jayhawk Audubon Society, rank the nestlings’ feeding time as their favorite eagle activity to watch.

“It looks like the baby eagles are really exasperating the adult that brings the food,” Cynthia Shaw says, describing the competition when adult eagles must feed two or more eaglets. “The adult holds out the food, and one of them gets the whole thing, then the adult gets right back to tearing up some more. I wait, hopefully, to see that the second bird gets it.”

With a kettle of mouths to feed, the work of the adult eagles is never done.

“Both adults fish,” says Ed Shaw. “After the chicks get fed, then the female will eat what’s left over, if they don’t eat it all. Or the male will climb in the nest and continue to feed them while she goes off.”

The shared responsibility for brooding, hatching, and feeding could test the most devoted of couples.

“They would have to get along to tolerate all that,” says Cynthia.

Family life

Like any dynasty worth the name, the Clinton Lake pair are now surrounded by their children and their children’s children. Though eagles do not stay together in extended family groups, juvenile eagles generally set up their own nesting territories within a hundred miles of where they hatched. Last year, a record 44 pairs of bald eagles nested in Kansas, and many of them can trace their lineage to the Clinton Lake homesteaders.

“We know the first two offspring are back, and there are a number of others,” says Mike Watkins, wildlife biologist with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers who works with threatened and endangered species in this area.

Unlike wintering bald eagles, who only visit Kansas during the coldest months, most nesting pairs of eagles stay in the state for the majority of the year, though they hide among trees during the hottest months, making them difficult to spot. Some couples, like the oldsters at Clinton Lake, will take mini-vacations during the hottest months but return in the fall to defend their nesting territories.

Last year, 81 juvenile eagles fledged in Kansas, for a total of 600 since the first two hatched in 1989. After more than two decades, the first Clinton Lake pair continue to build their dynasty, producing three young in 2011, despite a fairly advanced age of mid- to upper 20s for the male.

“You’ve got to hand it to the bird,” says Birrell. “He’s an old guy now. The fact that he just continues to plug away and raise babies year after year is remarkable.”

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First published in Lawrence Magazine, Winter 2011