The fate of our (unofficial) national bird fluctuated. Exclusive to North America, bald eagles made ferocious, handsome symbols for a new land, but as real birds, they were often despised as thieves. In fact, they could be talented kleptoparasites stealing fish from others, although scientists now consider this a sign of intelligence, not moral corruption. The once-widespread idea that they could snatch human children — dramatized in the 1908 silent film “Rescued From an Eagle’s Nest” — was false. Yet they were shot, poisoned and strangled as predators by the thousands. They suffered habitat loss. The Bald Eagle Protection Act in 1940 and the ban on DDT in the early 1970s were vital.
Among the army of eagle champions Davis details, my favorites are the more idiosyncratic unknowns: people like Doris Mager, who took a motion sickness pill before ascending to an unoccupied Florida eagle’s nest in 1979 for what wasn’t called a sit-in, but a week long” nest in.” She brought the population consciousness of the bald eagle into decline – at that time the birds were threatened in most states.
Davis also credits the ornithologists and biologists who ramped up egg production, with helpful hens called in to hatch extra bald eagle claws, and super glue to repair cracked shells when each egg counted. Young healthy eagles were flown over the land and herded to repopulate their habitat.
By the 1980s, “hack towers,” or artificial nesting towers, in which invisible human caretakers hand-reared the birds, were in full swing. The eagles raised on these programs gave their best, giving Davis close-up dramas of tiny eagles growing up “with their wings like crutches” to move around, while their large feet “flop out in front of them like clown shoes.” An eagle, No. 60, which failed an initial flight attempt, made an emergency landing and had to trudge back to the ground to the home tower, “head down”.
Davis excels at almost everything in this exuberantly comprehensive book, but especially in highlighting individual birds such as the translocated ones making their way around the world. With the number of eagles now estimated to be the level they were before “America became America,” their comeback is astonishing.