Bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus)
With the upcoming holiday, this is the week to get to know a special area crawly. Meet our National Bird, the bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus).
First fun fact: The bald eagle has only been our official National Bird for seven months. Yep. File that under “things everyone had assumed someone else had done.” The bald eagle has been our national symbol for 250 years, but unlike the bison who was granted official National Mammal status, the bald eagle as an actual animal – versus an olive branch and arrow clutching heraldic image – was never given proper recognition.
Preston Cook, an avid eagle memorabilia collector and author of the 2019 book American Eagle: A Visual History of Our National Emblem noticed the slight and kicked off the designation process with the Federal Government. The National Bird designation was made official in late December 2024.
Bald eagles can be found throughout North America, but some areas, such as our mutual backyard, have far more than most other states. We’re incredibly lucky to live in a place where you can literally see a bald eagle “any old time.”
During summer months the bald eagles tend to stay away from the Rogue River corridor, as the osprey rule that particular bird highway during breeding season, but you’re quite likely to spot a baldie up at Lost Creek Lake this month (and every month).
If you head over to Klamath National Wildlife Refuge in winter, you may see 20 or more bald eagles hanging out in a single tree, because from December to March, Klamath Basin has the largest concentration of bald eagles in the lower 48 states.
Another good time to see bald eagles locally is when salmon and/or steelhead breed, die and wash up along creeks and rivers. Bald eagles love a good, free, no work carrion meal (see photo of mated pair dining on a steelhead carcass).
Fun fact: As birds go, bald eagles seem to know they are apex predators and you can get quite close to them for a photo op, or just a good look, they don’t spook easily.
Bald eagles are classified as sea eagles and are the only sea eagle species in our area. With a nautical moniker, you can deduce they almost always live near water.
We think of bald eagles as having a fishy diet, but really they are opportunistic feeders and not persnickety eaters. Not at all. They’ll dine on anything and everything from fish to aquatic birds (ducks, geese) and mammals (muskrats), reptiles, amphibians and crustaceans.
They don’t care if their meal is alive or dead, and they’ll take advantage of any available carrion including roadkill. They also don’t care if their meal was first caught by someone else, they’ll steal a meal right out of the talons of an osprey or turkey vulture if they can get away with it. You can see why the osprey bully the baldies away from the river during summer months.
With a length of 28 – 38 inches and a massive wingspan of 66 – 96 inches (not a typo) bald eagles need a lot of fuel; can’t blame them for their catch as catch can dietary lifestyle.
Bald eagles aren’t always fierce and stoic, however, they’ve been seen playing with improvised toys such as plastic bottles. One person even witnessed a group of six bald eagles tossing a stick around to each other while in midair.
Fun fact: Female bald eagles are about 25% larger than male bald eagles and Alaskan bald eagles are the biggest overall with southeastern and southwestern U.S. bald eagles being the smallest.
It’s believed bald eagles mate for life, and with a lifespan of up to 30 years in the wild, that’s a long time. Monogamous doesn’t mean boring though, mated pairs participate in one of birddoms most spectacular mating displays; a pair flies way up into the air, then they lock talons, and cartwheel downward together, breaking off at the last instant to avoid crashing to ground.
The end result is a single brood annually with a clutch of one to three eggs. They lay these eggs in ginormous nests. The nests, which they reuse and repair all year long, can be five to six feet across and four to five feet in depth.
Final fun fact: Bald eagles don’t acquire their signature “bald” look of clean white head and tail feathers until they are five years old. They start out brown, and molt annually gaining more white as they go (see photo of two juvenile bald eagles hanging out together and one young bald eagle).