Why do bald eagles migrate

Eagle nests are constructed with large sticks, and may be lined with moss, grass, plant stalks, lichens, seaweed, or sod. Bald eagle nests are generally feet wide and feet deep, although the nesting pair will add nesting material to the nest every year.

Some eagle nests stay small, but some can reach 10 feet across and weigh a thousand pounds! The largest recorded bald eagle nest, located in St. Petersburg, Florida, was 9. Nests may grow so large that they make a tree top heavy, and will cause the nest or tree to fall over in storms. Breeding bald eagles typically lay one to three eggs once a year, and they hatch after about 35 days. The young eagles are flying within three months, but they will continue to use their nest as a "home base" where their parents continue to care for them for an additional weeks.

Learn more with the Nesting Calculator. Young eagles can have high rates of mortality due to disease, lack of food, bad weather, or dangers associated with humans collision with cars or power lines. After they are a year old, their survival rates are much higher. When America adopted the bald eagle as the national symbol in , the country may have had as many as , nesting eagles.

Although they primarily eat fish and carrion, bald eagles used to be considered marauders that preyed on chickens, lambs, and domestic livestock. Consequently, the large raptors were shot in an effort to eliminate a perceived threat.

Coupled with the loss of nesting habitat, bald eagle populations declined. A amendment added the golden eagle, and the law became the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. However, DDT and its residues washed into nearby waterways, where aquatic plants and fish absorbed it. Bald eagles, in turn, were poisoned with DDT when they ate the contaminated fish.

The chemical interfered with the ability of the birds to produce strong eggshells. As a result, their eggs had shells so thin that they often broke during incubation or otherwise failed to hatch. DDT also affected other species such as peregrine falcons and brown pelicans. Soaring is accomplished with very little wing-flapping, enabling them to conserve energy. Long-distance migration flights are accomplished by climbing high in a thermal, then gliding downward to catch the next thermal, where the process is repeated.

Bald eagles tend to migrate in groups. A "stream" of migrating bald eagles can be twenty to thirty miles long, with birds spread out about a half mile apart. The information and photos on this web site may be used for student projects as long as neither are placed on other websites.

The photographs are copyrighted by Hope Rutledge, the owner and author of the American Bald Eagle Information website, and are NOT available for other websites, photo galleries or commercial use of any kind. In Florida, this is not a problem: heat is. So, to avoid the hottest time of the year, Florida eagles do their nesting and chick-rearing in the winter months.

Those young, and sometimes, a very small percentage of the overall adult breeders, then move north during late spring and summer months.

Mostly, Florida eagles have year-round suitable habitat conditions available to them, so they do not have to move. Clutches are one to three eggs per year. Incubation lasts for 35 days and brooding for four weeks until young are pushed out of the nest. The birds mate for life.