Rfalconcam Forum

LOUISVILLE, Ky. --
Biologists from the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife are watching a pair of nesting bald eagles along the Ohio River.

It's the first documented eagle's nest in Jefferson County, but biologists are concerned this weekend's air show could affect the nesting process.

The area where the birds are nesting is inaccessible, but on Friday a biologist from the Department of Fish and Wildlife monitored the birds from across the river during the practice air show.

Avian biologist Kate Heyden used a spotting scope to monitor a pair of bald eagles nesting on Shippingport Island.

"How often the birds sit on the nest or come back to the nest or feed their chicks. We try to determine if they're on eggs or have chicks," Heyden said.

This weekend, Heyden is also trying to see if or how the air show might affect the nesting process.

"I think with Thunder Over Louisville our biggest concern was the planes because it happens during the day and so it is the noise and just having something fly over you might be disturbing it would seem like a predator or something like that," Heyden said.

WLKY News was unable to spot the nest with a camera lens, but Heyden said the pilots are going to avoid overflight of the island and avoid low flights.

"At this time of year the birds are either incubating eggs or they have young chicks and so we wouldn't want to do anything that would cause the birds to leave the nest more than they normally would because that would make the nest more susceptible to predators or to failing," Heyden said.

As for the fireworks show, Heyden said that's not as much of a concern as the planes because the fireworks noise is similar to that of a thunderstorm.

"The birds don't usually leave the nest at night, so they might see it as a bad storm and hunker down like they would during a storm," Heyden said.

Despite the efforts to reduce the level of disturbance from the air show, Heyden said there's still a chance the eagles would not produce.

"This is a good learning experience for us as we have more nests pop up in the urban areas. We want to know how these types of events will effect the nests so we can make future recommendations on how to not disturb others," Heyden said.

Heyden said the bald eagles are doing fine despite Friday's practice.

She'll be back out there on Sunday to monitor the birds after the show.

Jeane and I went to view the nest twice, maybe 10 days and then 14 days ago, roughly...it was amazing between the two visits how much harder it was to see the nest because the trees leafed out so much!  It's on an inaccessible island (managed by the corps of engineers), which is probably good to keep folks from disturbing the eagles.  You can only see it from the opposite shore, pretty far away.  Our scope gave us a nice view, but it's always really windy on the river, and we had trouble getting good pictures with the wind pounding the camera on the tripod, especially at 60x magnification.  But I've posted our best digiscoped shot.  The eagles took over an old Great Blue Heron nest, and just a few yards away are bunches of active GBH nests.  I'm a little afraid for the baby herons, with opportunistic eagles next door.   The eagles nest is pretty small and flimsy compared to most Bald Eagle's nests I've seen; it's a first year nest, and the speculation is that these may be young, inexperienced eagles.  I sure hope the crazy air show didn't bother them.  It sure bothered me to hear those military planes with ear-blasting noise flying over our house (we're in the flight path between the airport and downtown where the air show was).