Eagles Nesting In Arm Of Saguaro Cactus A First In Arizona

ARIZONA — For 18 years, Arizona wildlife biologist Kenneth “Tuk” Jacobson has been searching the giant saguaro cacti unique to the Sonoran Desert for signs of nesting eagles. This year, he was finally rewarded in what is billed as the first documented sighting of nesting eagles and their eaglets living in the unusual habitat.

Until Jacobson spied the nest cradled in the arms of a saguaro during a recent aerial survey, the notion that mom and dad eagles would choose such a prickly beginning for their young existed only in a decades-old legend.

Without photographs or records to back it up, no one could say for certain if Kermit Lee, who ran Lee's Trading Post in the 1930s, had only guessed that the large nests in the saguaros along the Verde River had been built by eagles.

After all, what possible advantages would a saguaro offer eagles ready to settle down and raise a family?

Most American bald eagles nest high in tree canopies getting essentially the best of two worlds for the raptors: the lush camouflage hides them and the soon to emerge family of eaglets, and the high vantage point allows them to keep their eyes out for predators or fish swimming in a stream below. Don't they?

Arizona bald eagles are tough old birds.

A subspecies of the American bald eagle known as the desert nesting bald eagles, they have evolved and adapted over the years to the harsh desert climate. They stick around when the temperatures soar well into the triple digits. They're not fair weather feathered friends.

You’ll see the regular sissified-by-comparison bald eagles in Arizona, too.

They fly in for the winter in October, a little like the human snowbirds who can’t stand the cold of the Midwest and Northeast, then migrate to northern North America and Canada to breed and nest around mid-March, before the searing heat sets in.

These eagles will never have to settle for a cactus to build a home.

The Sonoran Desert also has conifers that would seem to be more to eagles' liking.

That’s what makes the sighting of eagles nesting in a saguaro so “very exciting,” the Arizona Game and Fish Department posted on its Facebook page.

“Who says a cactus can’t be cozy?”

One way the small, still endangered but hardy population of desert nesting bald eagles has adapted to Arizona’s harsh desert climate: The get right after it when changing seasons signal it's time to settle down and start raising young.

They want their offspring to fledge and find their own shelter by June, before the punishing heat of July and August set in. So they begin their courtship, a ritual that includes cooperative nest building, in December or January. By February, mom and dad eagle are taking turns sitting on eggs — often two, but as many as four. It takes about 65 days for the young eaglets to begin pecking their way out of the shells.

The entire population of desert nesting bald eagles lives in Arizona, where they receive both state and federal protection.

The population is small but expanding, according to the biologists with the Prescott and Coconino national forests. Continued monitoring “of this unique population of desert-nesting eagles is needed in order to recover the birds to a healthy viable number,” the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says.

The desert nesting bald eagles build their nests mostly along the Salt and Verde rivers, where Kermit Lee said he saw them in the 1930s. There are 47 known bald eagle breeding areas in Arizona, and 36 percent of them are along the Verde River.

The best times to see this Southwestern population of bald eagles is from late November through early June.