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The Natural (and Political and Cultural) History of the America Bird


The fate of our (unofficial) national bird has fluctuated. Native to North America, bald eagles formed wild, handsome symbols for a new country, but as true birds they were often despised as thieves. In fact, they may be skilled kleptoparasites that steal fish from others, but scientists now see this as a sign of intelligence rather than moral corruption. The once widespread notion that they could snatch human children, dramatized in the 1908 silent film “Rescued From an Eagle’s Nest,” was wrong. Yet as predators, they were shot, poisoned, and drowned by the thousands. They have lost their habitat. The Bald Eagle Conservation Act of 1940 and the prohibition of DDT in the early 1970s were vital.

Amongst the details of Davis’s army of eagle champions, my favorite are the more bizarre unknowns: people like Doris Mager, who took a motion sickness pill for a week, not sit-in, before stepping out into an empty Florida eagle’s nest in 1979, labeled as “nesting.” It raised awareness that the bald eagle population was declining – at which point, the birds were endangered in most states.

Davis also credits ornithologists and biologists with increasing egg production with helper chickens incubating extra bald eagle broods and superglue to patch cracked shells as each egg is counted. Young healthy eagles have flown and driven cross country to repopulate their habitat.

In the 1980s, “hack towers” or artificial nesting towers were in full swing, where unseen human caretakers hand-fed the birds. The eaglets reared in these programs did their best, presenting Davis with close-up dramas of the little eagles growing up “using their wings as crutches” while their big feet “fly in front of them like clown shoes”. An eagle number 60, which failed in its first attempt at flight, made a forced landing and was forced to return to the main turret “head down” on the ground.

Davis shines in everything in this vastly expansive book, but he especially highlights individual birds, such as displaced birds that change their way around the world. Eagle numbers are now estimated to be at levels before โ€œAmerica became America,โ€ and their return is astonishing.



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