Ron Joseph banding golden eagles in Utah in 1978. Most nests in Maine and Utah are tucked in crevices below cliff overhangs, aka eyebrows. Photo courtesy of Kent Keller

The Eagle
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

On a clear day in June 1969, George Young banked his floatplane several hundred feet above Western Maine’s Enchanted Pond, pulled back on the throttle, and cruised in front of a large rocky outcropping on Shutdown Mountain. “I want to show you something,” he told me. Pointing to a large stick nest on the side of the cliff, he added, “There, look closely, and you’ll see a large brown bird standing up. It’s an adult golden eagle.” I was 17 years old, and that was my very first golden eagle sighting — a thrill for an aspiring raptor biologist.

In the late 1960s, Maine was home to a few pairs of golden eagles, though their numbers had steadily declined since the 1950s due to the widespread use of pesticides like DDT. According to the late Peter Vickery, friend and author of Birds of Maine (published in 2020), 10 to 12 pairs of golden eagles historically nested in Maine, mostly in the state’s western mountains.

Other than Vickery, few people were aware of Maine’s small, inconspicuous golden eagle population. Dr. Walter Spofford was one of them. A neuroanatomy instructor at Cornell University’s Medical School, his passion was monitoring declining nesting golden eagles throughout the Appalachian Mountains, especially pairs in Maine. In 1984, he documented Maine’s last successful golden eagle fledglings. One of my treasured home videos is of Dr. Spofford tossing rabbit carcasses to golden eagle youngsters in a nest near Chain of Ponds, northwest of Sugarloaf Mountain.

At our first meeting in 1976, I chatted with Spoff (he insisted friends call him by that nickname) at his winter home in Cave Creek Canyon, Arizona. He was 68 at the time and beamed when I mentioned seeing that golden eagle on a crag above Enchanted Pond. He made note of the nest and nonchalantly mentioned that he’d been observing Maine’s nesting golden eagles since the 1940s. His wife, Sally, a former director of the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology, was irritated by his reluctance to share with me his Maine nest site locations. She shamed him into giving me a Maine highway transportation map with several golden eagle nesting territories delineated in large circles in pencil (I donated the map to Maine’s state eagle biologist at the time, Charlie Todd).

In Utah and Maine, most golden eagle nests are tucked in alcoves of rocky outcroppings. Photo courtesy of Kent Keller

As I was leaving, Sally walked me to the door and asked if I was annoyed with her husband. “Not in the least,” I replied. “Spoff is dedicated to protecting Maine’s rare golden eagles. Secrecy is important.” Spoff was rightfully concerned that publicized golden eagle nests might be raided by diehard egg collectors or falconers. He was also concerned that federal and state biologists would augment Maine’s few nesting golden eagles with hatchlings from western birds, which he claimed would be a grievous mistake since the subspecies were genetically distinct. As a mere graduate student studying golden eagles in Utah, who was I to question him?

Several years later, I further endeared myself to Spoff by sharing my monitoring notes of a historic golden eagle eyrie west of Baxter State Park. At that time, I was the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife regional wildlife biologist in Greenville. A lone adult golden had returned to the nest site. I attempted to attract a potential nest mate by placing a road-killed moose and, two weeks later, a dead horse in a nearby gravel pit. Both efforts were unsuccessful.

Observing rare golden eagles in Maine was the antithesis of my experience with golden eagles in Utah, where the species is common. Following graduate school, I landed a raptor ecologist position in 1978 with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Salt Lake City. Encouraged by Spoff, I initiated a six-year golden eagle banding study to learn more about their seasonal habitat preferences. The study revealed that the state’s goldens are year-round residents and that first-year eagles, being inexperienced fliers, are highly vulnerable to electrocution.

Electrocution occurs when eagles perch on distribution line crossarms, and their wings touch two live wires or a live wire and a ground wire. Adults learned to fold their wings tight against their bodies while landing and leaving power lines. Juveniles, however, often died because they’re clumsier fliers. In the winter of 1979, Kent Keller, my field assistant, and I collected over 100 electrocuted young golden eagles beneath approximately 50 miles of power lines. The carcasses were donated to the National Eagle Feather Repository (then in Idaho; now in Colorado) for use by Native Americans. Even today, eagle feathers and bones are used in their religious and cultural ceremonies. Our findings prompted Utah Power and Light to “raptor-safe” several distribution lines in high desert valleys in our study area.

Prime golden eagle country in Utah is dominated by sagebrush and juniper. The foothills habitat supports black-tailed jackrabbits, the preferred prey of eagles. Photo by Ron Joseph.

The study also shed light on the species’ longevity and migratory habits. In 2012, the National Bird Banding Laboratory informed me that an eaglet I had banded on May 5, 1980, died on January 14, 2012. The postcard sent me scrambling through my field notes. The eagle — a female — was banded on a small cliff in Crooked Canyon, Utah. She died from being struck by a vehicle on a highway near Lynndyl, Utah, 33 miles southwest of the nest where she’d fledged in May 1980. According to the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology, at 31 years, 8 months old, she’s the oldest recorded golden eagle in North America. (https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Golden_Eagle/overview)

In May 2023, I spent a week in Utah banding golden eagle nestlings with Kent Keller, who had continued our study. We visited our old eagle haunts and banded about a dozen golden eagle youngsters. It was great fun reminiscing about our joint eagle work in the late 1970s and early ’80s, including an unforgettable trip in Spanish Fork Canyon in May 1979.

We had strenuously hiked an hour up a mountain to band an eaglet standing in a stick nest on a canyon wall. It was a “walk-in” nest, meaning rappelling gear was not needed to access it. A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service numbered aluminum band was placed on the chick’s left leg. We took photos and a few measurements, noting that the nest was littered with three dead gopher snakes and four black-tailed jackrabbit carcasses. Just as we started descending, an adult eagle flew low from behind the top of the cliff. Startled by us, the eagle dropped its prey, which fell several hundred feet through the air before landing in sagebrush near the trailhead. A half hour later, we found the prey item. It was a dusky grouse.

Considering the abundant food supply at the nest and our limited provisions for a campout dinner, we elected to keep the grouse, which had been plucked and eviscerated by the eagle. That night, sitting near our tent further up in Spanish Fork Canyon, we stared at the stars and dined on a plump, two-pound grouse roasted over red-hot cottonwood coals. It was a delicious meal, thanks to a golden eagle.

In January 2024, when I learned of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife’s new statewide golden eagle monitoring program, my thoughts turned to my late friend Spoff. He would have followed the study with an eagle’s eye. (https://www.maine.gov/ifw/fish-wildlife/wildlife/species-information/birds/golden-eagle-study.html)

Today’s research on one of Maine’s rarest species mirrors those that Spoff and I employed years ago. Bait piles of dead moose and deer are a tried-and-true method to attract golden eagles. Each bait site is equipped and monitored with trail cameras by volunteers under the supervision of state biologists. Preliminary results are encouraging. So far, golden eagles have been observed in 20 townships. Trail cameras, especially ones operated by Allie Ladd of Byron, are capturing amazing photos and videos.

It would be a significant milestone for biologists to document the first nesting golden eagles in Maine in more than four decades. As a lifelong golden eagle enthusiast, I’m hopeful that the species will once again raise youngsters in our state.

Ron Joseph of Sidney is author of Bald Eagles, Bear Cubs, and Hermit Bill: Memories of a Maine Wildlife Biologist, published by Islandport Press