Winter is home improvement season in the bald eagle world. In Allegheny County, five nests are bustling with activity and one eagle couple are, well, companions without commitment.
The eagles' return to the Pittsburgh area this century proved that the Smoky City is cleaning up its act, and in 2023 their story continues. Three experienced eagle pairs have settled into a now-familiar nest renovation and mating routine, two young couples are still learning the lessons of parenthood and one lovelorn two-time widower continues his struggle to find a lifelong mate and raise a family.
Bald eagles had mostly abandoned the region in the first half of the 20th century. In 1980 there were just a few known nests in Pennsylvania. Nationwide, the species was on the brink of collapse.
As federal pollution regulations and habitat reform slowed the eagles' population collapse, wildlife agencies nationwide initiated restoration programs.
Pennsylvania Game Commission staff imported eaglets from Canada, wore eagle-face hand puppets to feed and fledge them and delivered the immature birds to locations throughout the state. In 2007 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service removed bald eagles from the national list of endangered and threatened species.
In 2010, a landowner in Crescent noticed a giant mass of sticks high in a white ash tree. The nest was soon confirmed to be the handiwork of bald eagles. A short glide as the eagle flies to the Ohio River, the nest was the county's first since the eagle's revival. During the next decade, more woven-stick masses as wide as 5 feet across and weighing 1,000 pounds were spotted.
Views into the nest bowls were not possible until 2014, when the Murrysville-based PixCams, with state Game Commission approval, provided a nest site in the Hays neighborhood in Pittsburgh with one of the first free-to-view live-streaming wildlife cameras.
Suddenly, the birds were stars, generating 3.5 million page views in the camera's first six months. Eagle lovers worldwide watched in real time as eggs were laid, chicks pushed through their shells and cute balls of feathers grew into fledglings that nervously leaped off the tree in their attempts to fly high above the Monongahela River.
The same year, Pennsylvania's bald eagle population achieved predetermined conservation benchmarks, warranting release from endangered and threatened status. They were upgraded to protected, the same oversight given to most self-sustaining wildlife. In most cases, a federal law prohibits killing bald and golden eagles or taking their parts, feathers, nests or eggs.
"There are hundreds of active eagle nests across the state now," said Seth Mesoras, the information and education supervisor for the Game Commission's southwest region. "When they were still vulnerable, we were going out weekly to check on what stages they were in. Now that they are thriving, we can focus on increasing the population of the species, not on individual nests."
Once a curiosity, Allegheny County's bald eagles have become familiar. Black and brown as adolescents, they develop their distinctive white heads and tails upon reaching sexual maturity at about 5 years old. Females are larger than males and can weigh up to 14 pounds. Nest building is a part of courtship, and like most eagles at Pennsylvania's latitude, their first eggs are usually laid in February.
"This is the time of year when the eagles begin to actively prepare for the breeding season," said Rachel Handel, spokeswoman for the Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania. "As they get closer to egg laying time, they're [bringing in] soft nesting material like grasses."
A new upgraded camera was placed at the Hays site in December. Recently, a red-tailed hawk was seen winging underneath the nest as its residents were working.
For two years, bald eagles nesting above the Allegheny River near Harmar were on camera. Since they moved the nest, their lives have become more private.
In North Park, there's no camera, but an ornithological soap opera has returned for another season.
Image DescriptionHoward Kepple, right, of West Deer, and Nate Kelly of McCandless focus their lenses on two bald eagles perched high in a tree in North Park on Monday, Jan. 23, 2023. (Post-Gazette)
A lone bald eagle seen soaring over the lake in 2019 returned the next year with a mate. Nest building and breeding were not successful. In 2021 the couple returned, but the female was killed in a traffic incident on the nearby Pennsylvania Turnpike.
The resilient male came back last year with a new mate that was too young to have sprouted white feathers. Their nesting tree was toppled during a storm and the young bride was lost. Now the determined widower is back with another companion.
"There's a lot of uncertainty about this bird we call 'the visitor,'" said Walter McKinnis of Evans City, an amateur photographer, eagle watcher and member of the North Park Bald Eagles Facebook group. "They haven't built a nest that we know of and by this time they should be mating, so we can't tell if [the visitor] is male or female. They're always together, the visitor is bigger and at this time of year we wouldn't think male eagles would be with other males."
Mr. McKinnis said until they're sure, the group is reluctant to attribute a gender to the widower's new friend.
Friday morning at U.S. Steel's Irvin Works on the Monongahela River in West Mifflin, another eagle cam provided by PixCams showed a pair renovating their nest for the fourth time. Like the steelworkers below them, the birds labored in alternating shifts — one tucked grasses and leaves between the woven sticks while the other worked security. About noon they took a well-deserved break.
U.S. Steel plant manager Don German said since 2020 the pair have fledged five youngsters.
"They're doing awesome," he said. "We haven't seen mating yet, but [the male] is starting to bring in gifts of fish, so we know courtship is happening. We're expecting the first eggs Feb. 24-27."
Since December, Mr. German has been taking a PowerPoint educational program to elementary schools. To date, he said, his visits have explained the significance of biodiversity and the Allegheny eagles to 2,100 kids from kindergarten through eighth grade.
Just a few miles across a narrow peninsula separating the Mon from the Youghiogheny River near Buena Vista, another bald eagle nest hangs above bicyclists riding the Great Allegheny Passage. There is no camera and no view into the nest.
Mr. Mesoras of the Game Commission said when food is plentiful, as it is in the Mon and Yough, eagles become less territorial.
"In other places in Pennsylvania, at Pymatuning Reservoir and along the Susquehanna River, eagle nests are closer than normal to each other and they get along," he said.
Allegheny County may have more undiscovered bald eagle nests. Mr. Mesoras said the prime time to find them is now, before the sprouting of spring foliage.
"A lot of times it's an accident," he said. "People see a Volkswagen parked in a tree — that's how big the nests are — and say, 'Holy cow! Look, it's a bald eagle nest."
