By Andrew Macdonald
Between 1982 and 1988, Cape Breton bald eagle chicks were captured and taken to the Boston States.
It was a program to re-constitute bald eagles in New England, specifically Massachusetts, after the eagle population in the United States was wiped out from habitat destruction, pesticide and chemical use, and by farmers who would illegally shoot the eagles.
Some three decades later, the program has been a resounding success, with 582 eagles now soaring the skies in New England, and as far as Rhode Island and Connecticut.
I spoke to Peter Austin-Smith Sr., a resident of the Annapolis Valley who is a retired Natural Resources biologist, and who headed up the eagle program.
Bras d’Or Lake is the epicentre of the province’s eagle population, and ground zero is Ross’s Point, between Dundee and Marble Mountain, a spot where biz titan Joe Shannon has kept his boats on his private dock.
“The numbers went down in the United States in the lower 48 states for a variety of factors, and we were contacted by government folk in America on a new idea to transfer bald eagle chicks taken from nests in Cape Breton and move them down to Massachusetts,” recalls Austin-Smith.
“We had monitored the population in Cape Breton and knew it was doing quite well. The idea is that you take bald eagles out of the nest — falconers used to do the same thing hundreds of years ago — and rear them in a cage until they are ready to fly”.
Only one bald eagle chick was taken from a nest, usually in a towering pine tree, where the nest might have had two chicks, says Austin-Smith.
“They would train them to fly, and the eagles would come back to the hack-box”, he says. “It was a condominium idea on tall poles”.
A bald eagle on its nest. Thirty to 40 years ago, the Nova Scotia government captured eagle chicks and flew them to the Boston States to re-introduce eagle populations in New England. Istock image
At six weeks of age, a chick would be ready to learn to fly out of the cage. “They were fed from a hole on top of the box, but they would not — this is important — see humans. We didn’t want the birds to bond with humans,” says Austin-Smith.
The chicks were placed near waterways, and when they learned to fly, dead deer were placed on nearby islands, he says.
The U.S. government did not pay for the eagles, but did pay for the Bras d’Or Lake nest inventories and surveys, and they paid to fly the eagles to America, says Austin-Smith.
Three decades later, the program has been a resounding success, says Austin-Smith, who notes his Boston States counterpart, Bill Davis is still on the job and planning to retire in a couple of years.
“Oh, boy, was it ever (a success)”, says Austin-Smith, noting 36 bald eagles were taken to New England between 1982 and 1988, and the first mating couple built a nest in 1989.
There are now 582 eagles in New England, many coming from Cape Breton, while some during the same period came from Western Canada and Michigan.
