The bald eagle population is growing in the D.C. area, as are ravens, which first nested here just a few years ago.
“Bald eagles are doing great,” said wildlife biologist Dan Rauch, who tracks birds for the D.C. Department of Energy and Environment. “They're one of the ultimate conservation stories. They've come up from numbers of less than 500 breeding pairs in the ‘60s and ‘70s up to, like, 71,000 now. And they're doing really well in the District, as well.”
He said there were 26 active nests between Great Falls and Mount Vernon last year.
“Twenty-six nests last year, right in the D.C. area of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers is, pretty amazing,” Rauch said.
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The presence of bald eagles indicates how clean the rivers are.
“These are the apex predators,” Rauch said. “In order for them to be surviving here, breeding here successfully, everything else has got to be lining up. That means they need proper habitat, they need clean water, they need a food source here.”
Bald eagles aren’t the only birds making a resurgence in D.C. Nine years ago, News4 reported on the first ravens’ nest ever recorded in the city. Now, there are multiple ravens’ nests across the city.
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“The ravens’ nest that we went to see last time — that was in 2016 — was the first ever recorded in the District of Columbia, and that nest has fledged 27 young out of it,” Rauch said. “And she's feeding chicks again this year.”
And there are more ravens’ nests, now. “We also have had them at the old Walter Reed historic site,” Rauch said. “We've had them in RFK and some other places around D.C. So, ravens have moved in, and they're also doing really well.”
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