Eagle Report

One of the perks of farming where we do is that we live in a birder’s paradise. Our home farm is on a hill perched above Harkins Slough, a freshwater wetland that is host to copious waterfowl. We regularly see great blue herons, egrets, terns, ducks, geese, coots, grebes, white pelicans, marsh wrens, kingfishers, and night herons. Add to these the hawks, kites, owls, falcons, grackles, swallows, phoebes, meadowlarks, hummingbirds, and songbirds that populate the uplands, and we could spend all our days just watching birds.

In the last century the slough was pumped out in the summer, and parts of the slough bottom were farmed. Since the late 1990s, however, the slough has not been pumped out (except for some groundwater recharge efforts to combat saltwater intrusion) and the water level has remained high. This has no doubt contributed to increasing the carp population in the slough, and the fish have made the area hospitable for some top fish-eating predators to move in.

First came the ospreys, who’ve been nesting on a pole in the slough for about 6 years. When they first came, power lines crossed the slough along the submerged Harkins Slough Road and they built a nest on one of these power poles. That ended badly, with the nest catching fire – the ospreys were OK but did not produce chicks that year. PG&E put a dummy pole next to that one with a large crate on top and the following year the ospreys came to the new pole and have been nesting on it every year since. I’ve seen at least one chick in the nest now. Local birders are very excited about the ospreys, as they hadn’t been recorded nesting in Santa Cruz county since the 1940s. Another pair of ospreys started building a nest last spring further up along Harkins Slough road, but abandoned that nest. PG&E put an extension on that pole to provide a safe place for the nest, but it’s a busier area and they may not come back there. But it’s exciting that there is more than one pair of ospreys attempting to nest in the area.

Then came the bald eagles. Like the ospreys, bald eagles nearly disappeared in California by the 1960s due to the effects of the pesticide DDT (banned in 1972). Efforts starting in the 1980s to restore the population throughout California have slowly paid off. The first pair seen nesting in Santa Cruz County came to Pinto Lake in Watsonville in 2012 and started building a nest there, but they did not stay there. Then in 2014, they (probably the same pair) came here to Harkins Slough, built a nest in a eucalyptus tree and successfully raised and fledged one chick. In 2015 they were back to the same nest and raised two chicks to adulthood. Then last fall, tragedy struck. Our daughter found one of the adult eagles dead in our apple orchard. It had apparently hit the power lines, touching two lines at once with that great 6 foot wing span. (PG&E has since come out and widened the distance between the power lines.)

We sadly watched the remaining adult when we saw it this spring, assuming there would be no nest this year. Then, last week, my daughter called out to me that the eagle was sitting in a nearby tree and I went out to look. I was beyond delighted and amazed when I saw not one adult in the tree, but two adult bald eagles–the eagle has found a new mate! It is an enormous privilege to be able to look out my farm office window and see bald eagles sitting in the tree just on the other side of the strawberry field. We wish the new couple much happiness and many children!