Photo Provided The number of bald eagles in Ohio has increased since 2020, with more nests and more breeding pairs. New eaglets should be hatching soon.

CADIZ — Ohio is a welcoming place for America’s most iconic bird to thrive.

According to the most recent bald eagle census, the Ohio Division of Wildlife estimates there are 806 nests in Ohio — an increase of 99 from the 707 bald eagle nests reported in 2020.

Nick Turner, wildlife officer for Harrison County, is familiar with local eagle sites.

“The bald eagle population has been doing very well. It seems like there’s more and more every year. Some of them will fly out and make new ground, but some of them will stick around. There’s a new nest just outside of Jewett right along the Conotton Trail that’s only a few years old, and there’s a mating pair that’s been there for the last couple years. There’s a nest off of Tappan,” he said.

“There’s several nests in the county. I don’t know the exact number. I’d say there’s maybe five or six around the county. Some of them you can’t get to or see from the road, you’ll have to hike a little bit,” Turner said. “The two that are pretty easily seen are the one on Lower Clearfork Road off Tappan Lake. … You can see the bald eagles out hunting and fishing. They primarily feed on fish, so you’ll see them around the big lakes, big waters, or down by the (Ohio) river. There’s a couple nests along Route 7.”

Turner added the Jewett nest is the easiest to view, since it can be seen from the bike path.

“If you park at the New Rumley entrance to the bike trail and head west maybe about a half-mile or so to the second wetland up on the bank close to the ridge, there’s a nesting pair and I know they’re feeding at that wetland a lot,” he said.

He said the Tappan eagles are popular.

“They’re a pretty common pair. They’ve been there for probably 15 years or more. They’ve been named Freedom and Liberty by some of the eagle watchers around the area. They’ve been pretty regularly having an eaglet every year. The average is to have one eaglet, then they’ll spend the spring and summer teaching them how to fish. …

“They don’t actually get their white head and tail until they’re about 3 years old,” he continued. “You may see a year or 2-year-old juvenile flying around. They’re a lot harder to distinguish because they’re more of a mottled brown. They get mistaken for an osprey or vulture sometimes.”

Turner said now would be a good time to view the eagles. Nesting season usually begins in mid-to-late winter, so this season’s eaglets should be hatching in the next month or so.

He added that it is difficult to say how Harrison County’s eagle population has expanded. The Jewett nest is a newer one, about 3 years old.

“There’s probably a couple nests in the area that we really don’t know about,” he said.

He mentioned the Clendening Lake area as an example of a location where nests would be difficult to see.

“There’s definitely been a noticeable increase in the last five to 10 years of numbers of birds around. I’ve seen as many as five at one time between adults and juveniles at Tappan Lake, and they’re obviously not sharing a nest,” Turner said.

In Monroe County, Wildlife Officer Wes Feldner also has seen more eagles and nesting pairs. He said he believes, based on reported sightings, that there may be two additional nests in his area.

“They do appear to be definitely growing. When I started as an officer in 2009, they were on the threatened and endangered species list and now they’re delisted,” he said. “I am getting more sightings than in previous years, and in areas where I hadn’t had sightings before.”

He said most nests in his county are along the Ohio River. Feldner asks the public to be cautious when eagle watching.

“You want to view it at a distance. You don’t want to disrupt its behavior,” he said. “Bald eagles are a federally protected bird.”

Ohio Department of Natural Resources spokeswoman Jamey Emmert pointed out official records on the agency’s website listing four nests each in Belmont and Monroe counties and one in Harrison County, but she added there may be more or less in any of those locations.

“The numbers continue to fluctuate based on activity levels,” she said, adding mated eagles may use the same nest for multiple years unless one or both dies, and not all are active in producing eaglets.

“It could easily have changed from 2020 … ,” she said. “We don’t do an intensive census every year because it’s so labor and time intensive, but we’re able to use calculations to build estimates based on survivability, and that’s how we came up with just over 800 nests for 2021,” she said. “We haven’t done a comparison to this extent since 2012.”

She said she did not have individual county comparisons from 2012, but said bald eagle populations have almost certainly increased. Emmert noted the various factors that complicate the process of counting, such as forest cover.

“We do helicopter surveys, and when we’re flying over with that kind of canopy we can easily miss them. We reached out to the public in 2020 asking for reports from the public of nesting activity to try and compare the information we have to what people knew about,” she said, adding that 2,500 reports from the public were submitted through the wildohio.gov website. ODNR then sifted through those reports to determine new from repeat reports.

“As big as those nests are, it seems ridiculous that we could miss them, but it happens,” she said.

Emmert said the survival rate for eaglets is 80 percent, and both parent eagles are involved in feeding and protecting the young. She said there may be further spurts in populations in a few years as more eaglets mature.

More information about eagles in Ohio can be found at wildohio.gov. Anyone who believes they observe a nest can contact the agency.