I live about twenty miles from the Visitors’ Center entrance to the Quabbin Reservoir, and in fact, I drive around the southern tip of the reservoir every day, as I travel to and from work.  It’s a marvelous place, this “accidental wilderness,” as they began calling it after it was created by erasing four Massachusetts towns from the map in 1939, in order to create a stable water supply for Boston, fifty miles to the east.

I don’t hike the trails very often, but today I drove out there shortly after lunch to walk along the top of the Winsor Dam and then attend a presentation on the resident bald eagle population.  Here I’m looking west from the top of the dam.

Note the large patch of winter snow in the background.

Although the sun shone brightly all day, it was very windy; the flags are flying straight out.

At 2 pm, around 75 of us crowded into the Visitor Center conference room for a talk by Bill Dean, an avid outdoorsman and photographer who has been observing wildlife for many years.  He lives with his wife in Monson and has been photographing the Quabbin eagles for about seven years.  He started his talk with some common-sense advice about observing eagles: when they are incubating eggs, they are sensitive to disruption, so don’t try to get too close. He uses a  Nikon D-7000, with 16 megapixels and digiscoping capability (I think this means he uses a spotting scope).  He noted that you don’t need a DSLR but can get excellent photos with a point-and-shoot camera with optical zoom.

As we watched his slide show, with both still images and video, Bill provided a running commentary on bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) lore.  Here are some interesting facts about our eagles:

• Nests are huge, perhaps 6-8 feet across and 4 feet deep
• Eggs are laid by the first week of March and incubate 35 days
• Nestlings go through different sets of feathers with color changes
• In July when the eaglets are between 10-14 weeks old, they leave the nest
• Both parents feed the chicks, even into September
• Eagles eat mostly fish but will also feed on other birds or even carrion
• Keen eyesight allows them to spot prey a mile away
• Wingspan of a mature adult is around 7 feet
• Males and females have the same coloration, but females are much larger
• By 5 years old they have the characteristic white head and white tail
• Average lifespan of an eagle in the wild is 25 years

The Quabbin eagles are a wildlife recovery success story.  They were first re-introduced in 1982 when Mass Fisheries and Wildlife and its partners brought in two chicks from Michigan, nicknamed Betsy and Ross, and raised them in cages overlooking the Reservoir.  Since then, the resident population has been closely tracked and monitored.  I don’t have recent numbers for you, though I can report that 107 bald eagles were documented in Massachusetts in 2011, during the annual Midwinter Bald Eagle Survey, which is scheduled each January.  These are not counts of breeding pairs, however, as during the winter, the eagle population increases dramatically due to the influx of migrants from Canada, where due to the more northerly climate, the eagles can’t find enough food.

One of these days, I’m determined to see at least one bald eagle at the Quabbin in real life, and then I’ll upload a photo for you.  Happy St Patrick’s Day.  You can see me wearing green in Image 9.