Look! Majestic and Free, Soaring above Fenton

Jennifer Whitaker and her children had seen bald eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus), our national emblem, but never in the wild.

The eagle was spotted on White Lake Road just west of Tipsico Lake Road in Fenton, Tyrone Township. "This was our kids and my first-ever spotting of one outside the zoo," Whitaker wrote in an email. "What an amazingly beautiful bird!"

Bald eagles were on the brink of extinction throughout the lower 48 states in the 1950s, due primarily to the use of certain chemicals that causing, among other adverse effects, delays in the breeding season or no breeding at all. The eggs that were laid often had thin shells and broke in the nests before they could reach maturity.

The Michigan Department of Natural Resources says that at the height of the eagle crisis in 1967, only 38 percent of the bald eagles in the state were able to raise at least a single chick. For the population to remain stable, productivity must be at least 70 percent.

Eagles had been a protected species at the federal level since 1940 and in Michigan since 1954, but their protection was amped up  after the ratification of the Endangered Species Act in 1973, and the Michigan endangered species act in 1974.

By the turn of the century, productivity of eagles in Michigan 96 percent, with 321 young eagles produced in 343 nests found.  However, the DNR warns problems still exist and eagles nesting along the Great Lakes coasts have higher contaminant levels in their blood than inland nesting pairs.