MAJESTY ALOFT: Spot residents get bird’s-eye perspective of America’s national chicken through tour

In 1782, when the bald eagle was positioned on the Wonderful Seal of the U.S., the majestic raptor also turned the countrywide chicken. By 1963, the DTD poisoning and other aspects had brought the chicken to the brink of extinction. But stringent polices gave it a likelihood at a comeback – and now, several nesting pairs can be viewed in Northeast Oklahoma.

Tenkiller Condition Park, in cooperation with Oklahoma Condition Parks, organized an eagle tour at the Sequoyah Countrywide Wildlife Refuge on Saturday, Jan. 23, from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. To accommodate social distancing procedures, the event was held by way of caravan tour. Attendees stopped at 6 different points inside the refuge to watch bald eagles and their nests.

Naturalist LeAnn Bunn performs at Tenkiller Point out Park and takes travelers on journeys to the refuge. She has every year place on her eagle tour for about 10 a long time.

“When I to start with acquired my task, I went down to the refuge in March, and I went to them and explained that this is invaluable investigate. I’d be silly not to do a tour in conjunction with you,” mentioned Bunn.

The subsequent calendar year, she hosted on a caravan tour, and it gained so substantially popularity that the team bought and fixed up a 28-passenger bus they observed in Arizona.

The eagle tour is now just one of the park’s signature systems mainly because the refuge is related with a undertaking that assisted consider bald eagles off the endangered species checklist.

The Sequoyah Countrywide Wildlife Refuge is a single of the web sites wherever southern bald eagles have been unveiled right after the Southwestern Bald Eagle Restoration System was introduced by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Company. The George Miksch Sutton Avian Exploration Centre in Bartlesville petitioned the federal agency for a permit that allowed them to gather eagle eggs in Florida so they could transplant them to human-made eagle nests at the wildlife refuge in the vicinity of Vian.

“They only took just one egg, and took it early in the laying course of action. So, the birds just laid yet another egg. They commonly lay two to 4. They did not hurt the breeding procedure. They brought them right here and hatched them, and lifted them with puppets that appeared like eagles,” reported Bunn.

In weeks, the small birds increase to grownup dimensions, and inside of 12 months, they fly away from their nests.

“They never glimpse like mom and father in that 12-7 days time period, but they are that measurement,” she explained.

Eagle watchers can tell a bird is a juvenile mainly because it lacks its exclusive white head coloring. Inside 3 to 4 yrs, the birds will get started breeding.

“We went from owning no southern bald eagles to 124 nesting pairs. That’s a great good results tale. It is so expensive to do surveys, so they cannot do it very normally. By now, who is aware of how many nesting pairs we have. At the rate that they ended up growing, I would say that we could have over 200 pairs, but that is just an educated guess,” said Bunn.

A person of the motives why bald eagles do so perfectly at the maintain is due to the fact of a preponderance of meals resources. An eagle will lay a one egg that hatches. Then it will lay a next egg, which signifies a larger chick will nest with a scaled-down just one. Throughout the state, it is standard for the young eagle to perish simply because the older and stronger eagle will compete when food stuff is scarce.

“At Sequoyah, which is such a wealthy resource, with all the fish and waterfowl for them to decide on from, it is rarely that eagles really don’t increase two chicks to adulthood,” mentioned Bunn.

Hen watchers were being equipped to watch eagle nests, which are the major in the world – and at the protect, they can be 5-6 feet throughout and about 3-4 ft deep. Eagles return to the identical nest as soon as they find a location they like. Some of the nests at the protect have been around for 10-15 a long time.

Friends arrived from Tahlequah to Cookson and as much off as Fort Smith. Quite a few had listened to of the celebration by term of mouth, together with Sharon McKee of Muskogee. She is initially from Missouri and 1st bought into eagle observing because she took tours at the Eagle Bluffs Conservation Region around the Katy Path, not far from Columbia, Missouri.

“They have a couple hundred stairs that you can climb. It is a wonderful place to see eagles,” explained McKee.

On one particular situation, an eagle swooped ideal over her, and after that, she gained a better appreciation for the noble raptors.

Verify it out

Eagle excursions will go on each individual Saturday by way of March 6, from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., and will be restricted to 15 automobiles. For reservations or information and facts, phone 918-489-5025 ext. 6, or email [email protected].