"Bald eagles once teetered on the brink of extinction, reaching an all-time low of 417 known nesting pairs in 1963 in the lower 48 states. Now, the bald eagle population has climbed to an estimated 316,700 individual bald eagles, including 71,400 nesting pairs."
It wasn't all that long ago that if you wanted to see an eagle in Ohio, you had to drive a bit, or at least have some insider knowledge of where there were nests. I remember driving out to the Old Dutch Tavern in Sandusky to see the nest behind the building.
Nowadays eagles are getting so common in Lorain County that eagle enthusiasts have a selection of where to go to see them, from Avon Lake to Lorain to Vermilion and beyond, including the southern part of the county.
But that wasn't the case back in May 1964, when the above article appeared in the May 5, 1964 Journal. Eagles were still newsworthy, and this article focuses on a nest in Sandusky that apparently had been abandoned after the eaglets that called it home had died.
It's interesting that the article points out that at that point, there were only 487 active nests in the whole country. And I like the puckish placement of a Kentucky Fried Chicken ad right below the eagle article.
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Eagles have shown up on this blog a few times, and I don't mean the lodge brothers kind.
This 2014 post told the story of the Eagles of Brownhelm and the Great Nest; this one highlighted Avon Lake's history of eagles living in that community.
I reminisced about eagles on this post, telling how my Dad often mentioned seeing the Great Nest as a toddler in the mid-1920s.
Two 2020 posts (this one and this one) were devoted to local nests and eagle sightings.
