I always wondered about the entrance sign to my hometown, Austin. It says “Welcome to Austin” across the top and “Where Eagles Soar” at the bottom.
I always thought that had something to do with the school’s mascot, the eagle. I never knew, or even thought, there were eagles in the area.

But what I recently found out, is that actually there are eagles in Indiana, and there are at least two about 10 miles from my house at Hardy Lake. That’s what Zach Walker, interpretive naturalist at Hardy Lake, said.

He visited Starve Hollow State Recreation Area in Vallonia on Feb. 13, and brought along a rehabilitated male bald eagle. The nearly 20 people there were within feet of a live bald eagle. It’s not every day you can get that close to something like that, and the fact that it’s one of our nation’s symbols makes it an even neater opportunity. It made me think, you can go to New York City and see the Statue of Liberty and you can go to Philadelphia to see the Liberty Bell. But these local people had the chance to see an eagle, which is something not as easy to do.

What surprised me even more was that at Starve Hollow, anywhere from 10 to 20 eagles can be seen at a time on the lake. But of course, you wouldn’t be within feet of them like people were with the eagle from Hardy Lake.
Walker said the eagle, found in Nebraska, had fallen out of its nest tree when it was half grown. That resulted in a broken wing and leg. The now 4-year-old eagle is immature because eagles aren’t considered mature until they are 5-years-old, Walker said. Hardy Lake obtained the eagle in September 2005 when it was a year and a half old.

Walker said at Hardy Lake’s Raptor Center, at all times, they have at least 13 permanently injured birds of prey that cannot be released back into the wild, like the eagle. But they have some that are coming in getting into rehab to be released back into the wild.
When Hardy Lake first got the eagle, its head was brown, its beak was black, it had black eyes and its body was speckled, Walker said. Those aren’t the characteristics a person would first think of when they picture an eagle.
It’s starting to look much more like an eagle now, as it reaches maturity. By April 2009, it will have a white head, dark wings, a white tail, a yellow beak and yellow eyes. The only difference now is that the lower part of its head is still a little dark, its beak hasn’t quite reached the fullow yellowness and its eyes are dark. Now, the eagle weighs nine pounds and has a six-foot wingspan.
Walker said it’s slowly changing into what we think of our national symbol, our bald eagle.

One thing Walker talked about is, at one time, it may not have been possible to even do what he’s doing. “We came very close to just being able to hold a picture of a bald eagle,” he said. “At one point, our national symbol, the bald eagle, we had less than 300 pairs left out in the wild. Some of the reason was because we were still paying people to shoot our national symbol up in Alaska because of fish.”

He said the people in Alaska who fished for a living weren’t benefiting because the eagles were eating the fish. So in turn, the fishermen would shoot the eagles and make money. The government decided to put a stop to that.
They also learned of the effects of DDT. Walker said when DDT was introduced, it was a good thing for farmers’ crops. But he said, “It would run off the crops and into the streams and the fish would get it in their systems and it wouldn’t hurt the fish. But eagles eat fish and it really hurt our adult eagles that eat the fish.”
With the DDT in the eagles’ bodies, the female eagles would lay eggs that were misshapen and when she would sit on thme to keep them warm, the eggs shattered.
“So for years, we were having all these older eagles dying off with no young ones replacing them,” Walker said. “So that’s why our eagle population was going down and down and down.”

So after all of this, the government made it illegal to shoot the eagles, use, sell or buy DDT in the United States and it was even illegal to keep an eagle feather. Thus, the numbers of eagles gradually increased.
In Indiana, we had not seen a successful eagle nest since the late 1800s, Walker said. But over time, in 1991, the first successful eagle nest in Indiana became reality at Lake Monroe in Bloomington. Nine years later, the goal was to have five nests—but the result was 32.
Flash forward another seven years, in 2007, and Walker said there were more than 70.
“It’s very impressive,” Walker said of the number of nests. “That teaches us a lesson that we can mess up a lot in nautre, we can do a lot of wrong, we can confuse things, we can mess up everything and how equal it is, but a lot of times if we catch it in time, we can bring it back, just like our national symbol. That’s a perfect example right here, a living example.”

Walker said he worked diligently to get the eagle to Hardy Lake. Well, his diligence and persistence obviously paid off. “This one could live to be 25 years old probably in the wild,” he said. “In captivity, with most birds of prey, they say you could double their life expectancy, so this bird could live to be 50 years old.”
Walker began full-time at Hardy Lake in fall 2006, but he worked seasonally the previous two years. He began with the eagle in 2005, and last year, his educational program reached 30,000 people.
Then he noted that the kids at the program Feb. 13 could someday be bringing their kids or grandkids back to see the same eagle.

With Starve Hollow, Laura Rissler, assistant property manager, said she’s happy with the number of eagles on the lake there. But she said with the number of juvenile eagles seen there, it’s possible, as they mature, that they will stay in the area close to the other eagles.

I had never been out to Starve Hollow, and I haven’t been out to Hardy Lake in years. I was impressed by Starve Hollow, and I think it would be neat to go out again someday and search on the lake for eagles. I didn’t do that the day of the program (and I don’t think anybody else did) since it was really cold and we had just received a little bit of snow. Maybe next time, I’ll be able to head right out to the lake and look for some eagles.

Here’s some interesting facts that Walker shared that I thought were pretty interesting:

1. Eagles do not have teeth; they use their beaks for eating purposes.
2. Eagles use their feet/claws/talons as “weapons” to swoop down and pick up food. Walker said people sometimes refer to eagles’ feet as “the business end of the bird.”
3. Eagles can strike as fast with their foot as a snake can strike with its head. Eagles’ talons can sink through skin, muscle and bone.
4. Eagles can see an 18-inch rabbit from two miles away, and they can see fish under the surface of water when flying above.
5. Female eagles, and other birds of prey, typically weigh more and have longer wingspans than the males.
6. The eagle, at one point, may not have been our nation’s symbol. Benjamin Franklin preferred the wild turkey to the eagle, as he saw the turkeys as “noble creatures” and the bald eagle was “a bad, moral character.” Nonetheless, in 1782, the eagle became the nation’s symbol.
7. It’s a Class C felony (the same as stealing a car) to have an eagle feather in your possession. You have to have a permit or license to have one, because the feathers are sometimes sold to the Far East where they buy them and use them to make money.
8. In Indiana in 1991, after nearly 100 years, the first successful eagle nest came about, at Lake Monroe in Bloomington. In 2007, more than 70 active eagle nests were found in Indiana.

***To check out a video of the program at Starve Hollow, go to www.tribtown.com and check out the Local Videos section. Also, do a search for the story that appeared in the newspaper, as well as a couple of photos.

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