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Apple River, IL) Terrence Ingram, Exec. Director of the Eagle Nature Foundation, has just released the results of its 59th year of conducting the Mid-Winter Bald Eagle Count. This year’s count continues to document the downward trend of the bald eagle population in the Midwest.

A total of 873 bald eagles were counted in this year’s count with only 175 immatures recorded. This compares to 1,156 total bald eagles counted last year with 230 immatures recorded. We generally have to go back to the early 1960’s to find numbers any lower than this year’s. The final results would have been much worse except for two dams being blessed with the presence of a bald eagle community of close to 100 birds on the day of the count.

Even though the eagle numbers were low, the numbers of volunteers counting the birds are probably 6 to 10 times greater than they were in the 1960’s when the late Elton Fawks was compiling the count. Mr. Terrence Ingram has been participating in the count ever since it started, and has been compiling the count ever since Elton Fawks passed away. Each year we get new volunteers to count the bald eagles in their own areas.

This count is conducted in basically a two hour period on Saturday of Count Weekend. This short time frame is designed to yield as accurate a number as possible and eliminate duplication of birds moving from one count area to another, as they fly 60 to 80 miles per hour. A community of wintering bald eagles has a feeding territory of about 250 square miles, so in one day they could possibly be seen by several different counters within that 250 square miles. In that two hour period, volunteers from Minnesota and Wisconsin to Tennessee and Nebraska travel many miles in their own areas in search for the bald eagles wintering near them.

When the bald eagle population was at its peak in the past, this count had recorded as many as over 4,000 total bald eagles and over 1,000 immatures. The bald eagle population in the Midwest gradually increased from the 1960’s until the first decade of the 2000’s. Ever since then it has been on a fairly general decline, with each year fewer birds being seen than were seen the year before. But this is the first year when some volunteers stated that they had driven their regular count routes without seeing a single eagle.

Some of the Lockmasters of the dams on the Mississippi give us hourly counts which they have conducted during the two days of the count. This is tremendously helpful in monitoring the migration and movements of the birds. Between morning and afternoon some dams will experience a great increase or decrease in the birds present. Looking at the counts for the dams either upstream or downstream from them a person can see in which direction the birds are moving during the two days.

Other bald eagle counts are recording a low number of bald eagles as well. For years the US Army Corps of Engineers has conducted weekly bald eagle counts at 12 dams along the Mississippi River from Dubuque, IA to Saverton, MO. Last year the numbers of bald eagles they saw were low, but this year they only saw a total of about 1/5 of last year’s count. For 30 years, the Ferry Bluff Council has conducted bi-weekly counts of bald eagles using nighttime community roosts along the Wisconsin River. The number of eagles seen by their volunteers this winter was the lowest they had seen in all the years of their count history.

Where are the eagles??? The Wisconsin DNR is claiming that now there are a record number of bald eagle nests in the state. Why aren’t those nests producing young eagles to be seen in the winter? We need to discover the cause for this discrepancy before the bald eagle population reaches a point of no return!

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For more information contact: Terrence N. Ingram, Exec. Director, Eagle Nature Foundation, 300 East Hickory St., Apple River, IL 61001 Phone 815-594-2306

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