This came in through the VA-Bird list serve and is very applicable to Loudoun County — our county is in the area where they need to know about more nests – so far, just 3 have been reported – surely we have more! If you know of a Bald Eagle nest – let us know (so we can track it) and report it through the website below.
When I was in 3rd grade, I remember our teacher talking about endangered species and that the Bald Eagle had just been listed. It’s exciting times when such a comeback is reported!
Virginia eagle population jumps more than 11% in 2010
The Center for Conservation Biology at the College of William and Mary and Virginia Commonwealth University has compiled 2010 survey results for the Virginia bald eagle population.
The 2010 survey checked more than 900 nests and monitored 684 occupied territories. This number represents an 11.8% increase over 2009. The number of breeding attempts increased by 10.2% and 136 new nests were mapped.
Eagle territories were located within 47 counties and 10 independent cities.
A total of 883 chicks were counted during the productivity flight. This is the highest chick production recorded throughout the long history of the survey. The Virginia population continues to have tremendous reproductive momentum.
Of 10,092 chicks documented in the past 34 years, 8.7% were produced in 2010 and 70.7% were produced since 2000. In general, this momentum is the combined result of an overall increase in the breeding population, the breeding success rate and the average brood size.
For the second year, the locations of known nests from the Virginia Survey are being made available online to the public. The Center has developed a VAEagles website that hosts a Google application allowing users to locate documented eagle nests and to view their mapped locations on a county by county basis.
The information is being made available in the hope that the public will become more actively involved in the conservation of this species throughout Virginia. Despite our best efforts, an unknown number of eagle nests go unrecorded each year.
This is particularly true in the Piedmont and mountains. We believe that the public knows of many nests that are unknown to us. We are requesting that the public view nests in their locality and report nests that are currently not included in the annual survey.