Bald Eagles

The crraaaack! was so loud that James Tolbert looked out his town house window to investigate, and that's when he saw it -- a snowy white head with yellow eyes soaring into the woods across the street, a tree branch the size of a baseball bat locked in its beak. The National Park Service soon confirmed what this blighted community 1.5 miles from the Capitol could scarcely believe: A pair of American bald eagles had built a nest in the nation's capital for the first time since Harry S.

BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA Bald eagle-watching Drift along the Squamish River, surrounded by Canadian wilderness while watching hundreds of bald eagles descend on the annual salmon run during Canadian Outback Adventures' "Bald Eagle Safari Bird Watching Adventure." Dates: Daily Nov. 29 to Feb. 15, except Dec. 24 to 26 and Jan. 1. Price: About $82 per person, including up to two hours of rafting and bird watching, hot beverages and transfers to and from the base.

Leslie Owen Collier was at a livestock auction when his cellphone rang. It was the White House. Twelve years after pleading guilty to federal charges in the deaths of three bald eagles, Collier learned his name was cleared: He was pardoned by President Bush. "I guess I was humbled is the best way to say it. I never thought it would happen," Collier, 50, said in a phone interview. "It was emotional. I almost came to tears." Collier was among 14 people pardoned by Bush last week.

The recent record rain, snow and ice storms in Washington state that downed power lines and caused millions of dollars in property damage have apparently had at least one salutary effect: A record number of bald eagles have been counted in Skagit County, north of Seattle. Jim Alt, a bald-eagle expert for the Nature Conservancy, stands on the bank of the Skagit River in Howard Miller Steelhead Park.

National Park Service biologists said two bald eagles have an egg in their nest on Santa Cruz Island, their second in as many years. More significant is that the egg might mean bald eagles can reproduce naturally in the Channel Islands. The number of eagles on the islands declined in the 1960s because of over-hunting and the heavy use of the chemical DDT.

Santa Catalina Island is now home to two baby bald eagles, the first to successfully hatch there in more than 50 years without human help. And scientists overseeing the hatchings, which occurred over the weekend, say another eagle nest a few miles away has two more eggs that could produce young within the next 10 days.

A bald eagle hatched in the wild on Santa Catalina Island, the third eaglet born without human assistance since chemical contamination on the island wiped out the iconic birds several decades ago, conservation officials said Sunday. The eaglet emerged from its shell sometime between Friday night and Saturday morning, according to Catalina Island Conservancy officials. Its sex had yet to be determined.

The latest bald eagle chick born on Santa Cruz Island without human assistance hatched early Friday, officials announced. In the last two weeks, four other eaglets hatched on Santa Catalina Island, another in the chain of eight islands off the coast of Southern California. The recent births are part of an effort to restore eagle habitat on the Channel Islands.

Not a twitch, not a swallow, not a stretch goes unnoticed. Around the country, eagle fanciers stay glued to their computer screens as the reintroduced bald eagles of Santa Cruz Island go about their daily lives before the unblinking eye of the EagleCam. From a law office in Franklin Square, N.Y., Deb Hansen -- Harpo516 to her peers -- gazes 3,000 miles to the west, with the eagles' Santa Cruz nest occupying at least a corner of her screen all day.

With the number of bald eagles in the United States hitting the highest level since World War II, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said it would decide whether to remove them from the list of threatened and endangered species by June 29. There are 9,789 breeding pairs of bald eagles in the contiguous states, the agency said, up from a low of 417 breeding pairs in 1963 after the now-banned pesticide DDT damaged the birds' reproductive systems.