Bald Eagle — facts, diet, habitat & conservation

The bald eagle is the national bird of the United States and one of conservation’s clearest wins — a species that came within a few hundred pairs of vanishing from most of the country and is now a common sight along rivers and coasts.

Overview

Despite the name and the reputation, the bald eagle is a sea eagle (genus Haliaeetus), a group of large fish-eating raptors that also includes the white-tailed eagle of Eurasia and the giant Steller’s sea eagle. It lives wherever there is open water and big trees: the coasts of Alaska and British Columbia, the Great Lakes, the Mississippi and other large river systems, and reservoirs across the continent.

Physical characteristics

An adult is unmistakable: dark brown body and wings, a bright white head and tail, a heavy yellow hooked bill, and yellow feet armed with talons up to 5 cm long. Wingspan runs from about 1.8 m in southern birds to 2.3 m in the largest Alaskan females. As in most birds of prey, females are noticeably bigger than males.

The eyes are the eagle’s signature tool — an eagle can resolve detail four to five times finer than a person with good vision, and a wide field of view, letting it pick a fish out of the water from a great height and distance.

Diet and hunting

Fish make up the bulk of the diet — salmon, trout, catfish, shad, and whatever is locally abundant. The eagle hunts from a perch or a soaring glide, drops feet-first to snatch prey from at or just below the surface, and carries it to a perch to eat. Its feet have rough spicules and a reversible rear toe for gripping slippery prey.

When fish are scarce it readily switches to waterbirds, rabbits, and carrion, and it will harass an osprey until it drops its catch. In winter, hundreds of eagles may gather at a single ice-free river reach or below a dam where fish concentrate.

Nests and reproduction

Bald eagles build the largest tree nests of any North American bird. A pair adds sticks to the same nest year after year; the record nest was 2.9 m wide, 6 m deep, and weighed close to three tonnes before the tree collapsed.

The female lays one to three eggs, which both parents incubate for about 35 days. Chicks fledge at 10–12 weeks but depend on the adults for several more weeks while they learn to hunt. Young eagles wander widely for their first few years, wearing mottled brown-and-white plumage, and acquire the clean adult pattern at four to five years old, when they settle down to breed.

Conservation

The bald eagle is listed as Least Concern, with an increasing population — a status it earned back.

In 1963, surveys found just 417 nesting pairs in the contiguous United States.
The main culprit was DDT, a pesticide that washed into waterways, built up in fish, and then in eagles, causing them to lay eggs with shells too thin to survive incubation. Shooting and habitat loss added to the decline.
The United States banned DDT in 1972 and gave the eagle strong legal protection. Populations recovered steadily, and the species was removed from the US list of threatened and endangered wildlife in 2007. A 2019 survey estimated more than 300,000 birds and over 71,000 nesting pairs.

It remains protected under dedicated US law, and the recovery is often cited as proof that reversing a wildlife decline is possible with the right policy and enough time.

Bald Eagle: common questions

Why is the bald eagle called "bald" if it has feathers?

The name comes from an older English word, "balde," meaning white — a reference to the bird's brilliant white head, not a lack of feathers. Young bald eagles are all-brown and only develop the white head and tail at about four to five years old, when they reach breeding age.

How did the bald eagle recover from near-extinction?

By the 1960s there were only about 417 nesting pairs left in the lower 48 US states, hit hard by hunting, habitat loss, and the pesticide DDT, which thinned their eggshells. The US banned DDT in 1972 and protected the birds and their habitat by law. Numbers have climbed ever since, and the species was removed from the US endangered list in 2007.

Do bald eagles mate for life?

Generally yes. Pairs typically stay together year after year, returning to the same nest and enlarging it each season, and they perform a dramatic courtship flight in which two birds lock talons and cartwheel toward the ground. A bird will usually take a new mate only if its partner dies.

Do bald eagles steal food?

Frequently. Benjamin Franklin famously called the bald eagle a bird "of bad moral character" because it often robs ospreys and other birds of their catch rather than fishing itself. It is an opportunist — it hunts, scavenges carrion, and pirates meals as the situation allows.