On Thursday morning in Piedmont an excited crowd of more than a dozen people gathered on a small sidewalk, their cameras, binoculars, and lenses pointed to the sky. At the base of a nearby lamppost, a pile of abandoned lens covers hinted at how many had recently stopped by. After a half hour, the crowd gasped as the birders saw what they’d been waiting for: a fledgling bald eagle launching from a eucalyptus tree across the street and taking flight, its white wing pits flashing as it flew.
When the fledgling landed, it plopped itself down in a giant nest the size of a large bathtub that rests sturdily on the branches of the neighboring eucalyptus. Those in the crowd readjusted their lenses but remained with eyes fixed on the branches as they awaited eagerly for the eaglet’s next cry or flap of its wings.
For the first time in recorded history, the East Bay has a successful nest of bald eagles, and it has garnered attention across Oakland and beyond. The Bay Area is part of bald eagles’ natural habitat, and before records of bird nesting were common, they were abundant. However, since scientists began noticing their population decline in the middle of the last century, a successful nest has never been observed in the East Bay until now.
Eagle-eyed spectators estimated that the nest appeared around March, perched atop a tall eucalyptus near Piedmont’s Mountain View Cemetery. Raptor expert Allen Fish, the former director of the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory, said the hefty nest is likely six-feet wide and three-feet deep. And if it’s successful, it will only grow over time…