Lake Quinsigamond Eagles
All images and videos © 2018 Lake Quinsigamond Watershed Association. All rights reserved.
Mom incubating while Dad in doting attendance.
Sometime in early in 2017, in mid-winter, sightings of Bald Eagles on Lake Quinsigamond began to be reported by lake residents. Shortly thereafter, it was confirmed that a pair of Bald Eagles were building a nest on an island in the lake, which is particularly amazing, because it is a very busy location in general. In their first season on the lake, the nesting pair successfully hatched and reared two Eaglets, a male and a female. Although both appeared to be developing well, just as they reached the stage of experimentally spreading their wings, the male somehow fell out of the nest and was spotted wandering around the base of the nest tree. For reasons unknown, but suspected, the parents were not attending to the poor little guy. After a few days, MassWildlife intervened, and transported the male Eaglet to the Tufts Wildlife Clinic in North Grafton for evaluation and treatment. Meanwhile the female Eaglet continued to thrive and soon began her first attempts at flight. As is their instinctive way, the parents followed her diligently around the lake environs and made sure she was both protected and fed. In accordance with their established annual rearing cycle, once the daughter was fully capable of feeding and caring for herself in November, all three family members went their separate ways for the early winter period.
As a sad note, the male Eaglet was diagnosed by Tufts with a fungal infection, and after several months of diligent treatments, it was determined he could never lead a healthy life, even in captivity, and the difficult decision to euthanize him was made. We were all devastated, but this is nature’s way. 
Fortunately for us, Eagles mate for life, and once a nest is built, the pair always return to the same nest, season after season. In late January of 2018, the Lake Quinsigamond Eagles were again spotted, and were confirmed to be busily repairing and rebuilding their nest. Mom laid her eggs sometime mid-March, incubated them while Dad faithfully fed her, and the eggs hatched sometime around April 22, 2018, as can be seen in the still images sequence below. It took a week or two, but then it was clear that two Eaglets had been successfully hatched, and were being dotingly fed and cared for by their attentive parents. At first they were covered in downy grey fur, which was slowly replaced by their immature mottled black feathers by the end of May. The rest is a story yet to be written, which will be updated frequently as the 2018 rearing season progresses.
It should be noted that the Lake Quinsigamond Eagles did not just appear on their own. Their presence in Massachusetts is due to the concerted efforts of the Massachusetts Eagle Restoration Project initiated and administered by MassWildlife, which was begun in 1982. Please refer previously published article by Bill Davis of MassWildlife (recently retired), for a full history of the Massachusetts Eagle Restoration Project.
Many thanks to the team that is responsible for the content, including, but not limited to the following: The Lake Quinsigamond Commission,The Lake Quinsigamond Watershed Association, Nadene Hausmann, Gary Ostroff, the IT Department at UMass Memorial Health Care, Terry McNamara, Marguerite Cormier, Sheri Davis and Garen and Barbara Kickham-Sahagian. In particular, Nadene Hausmann has done an amazing job of photographically chronicling the Eagles 2018 rearing season – most of the images presented here were taken by her. If you have any questions regarding this web page and its contents, please contact Garen Sahagian at garnivore@townisp.com.
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Photos
View photos of the progression from pre-egg laying to first peek of the eaglets. | View Brad Stone’s photos of the baby eaglets banding.
Videos
Wildlife Experts Go To New Heights To Restore Eagle Population In Mass.
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Bringing Back Magnificence:
30 Years of Bald Eagle Restoration by Bill Davis
A veteran biologist provides a personal, retrospective look at one of the Division of Fisheries & Wildlife’s most famous and successful wildlife restoration programs… The premise was simple: acquire young eagles between 4 and 6 weeks of age from wild nests in areas where the population was not endangered; bring them to a new location and raise them in artificial nests in such a way that they would “imprint” on their new surroundings as they grew and developed; then release them to the wild.