Ben Womelsdorf, a Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism agent, has opportunities to see first hand more wild critters than most folks.
Even so, he was enthralled a few days ago when duck hunting in the Neosho Falls area he watched eight bald eagles soaring above him.
“It’s been amazing in my lifetime how bald eagles have made a comeback,” from seldom seen to a fairly common occurrence in Allen County skies, Womelsdorf said.
He reported his sightings of the flight of eight while alerting the Register about a pair of majestic adult eagles lounging near a settling basin at Iola’s water plant. Toby Ross, water plant supervisor, had called earlier.
The eagles had been around for a couple of days, Ross said, and were a little weary. The accompanying photo was made with a 200-meter lens, and efforts to get a little closer only resulted in the eagles taking short flights farther from the plant, but still near the water. Fish are a diet staple.
Ross said the eagles, the nation’s symbol, had had a presence at the water plant and near the sanitation lagoons just southwest of town each of the past several years, sometimes as many as six at a time. Bald eagles also have been seen relatively often elsewhere in the area.
The two that drew attention have been near the water plant since mid-week and often noticed by passersby on U.S. 54.
Womelsdorf pointed out that they are migratory and usually followed flights of ducks through Allen County. He was told, Womelsdorf added, that a pair of eagles built a nest, about the size of a pickup truck’s hood, along the Little Osage River in Bourbon County, “but I haven’t checked it out yet.”
BALD EAGLES were on the verge of extinction in North America in the mid 1900s. Populations then recovered and stabilized to the point that they were removed from the List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife in the lower 48 states on June 28, 2007.
They often are found near large bodies of water of open water and choose old-growth trees for nesting.
The adult bald eagle mainly is brown with a white head and tail. Sexes are identical in plumage, but females are larger. They have large and hooked beaks.
Bald eagles actually are not bald, the name derives from the older meaning of the word, “white-headed.”
