Bald eagles in Ohio

At a glance

Overview

Ohio's bald eagles almost vanished. The state's nest table begins with 15 nests in 1959 and falls to 4 in 1975 and again in 1979, and in three of those years not a single young eagle left a nest anywhere in Ohio. (source) From 1979 the Division of Wildlife ran a recovery program of nest watching, fostering of captive-hatched eaglets and landowner work, (source) and the nests climbed to 63 by 2000. (source) The 2025 census found 964 active nests in every county but one, and the bald eagle has been off Ohio's endangered list since 2012. (source) The comeback is real, but the famous numbers need care: they were counted different ways in different years, and bird flu, lead and cars still kill eagles. (source)

Before the crash

Eagles were part of the Ohio shoreline long before anyone counted them. Columbus founder Lucas Sullivant reported an eagle nest among the rocks above the Scioto, probably at today's Marble Cliff, according to the Columbus Audubon checklist of Franklin County birds. (source) The same checklist quotes the naturalist J. M. Wheaton, who in 1882 called the bald eagle a common resident in some Ohio localities but rare in Franklin County. (source) Eagles were also killed: between 1878 and 1880 six Franklin County bald eagles reached one taxidermist, mostly shot with rifles, and two had been poisoned with strychnine on a carcass. (source) Nobody counted Ohio's eagles before the 1920s, so any figure for the pioneer population is a guess. (source)

The crash, 1959 to 1979

The state's long record starts in 1959. Mark Shieldcastle, a former leader of the Division of Wildlife's bald eagle program, credits Ottawa County wildlife officer Laurel Van Camp with first raising the alarm that eagles were not reproducing and making the first estimates that year. (source) The Division of Wildlife's nest table shows 15 nests and 5 young in 1959. (source)

What followed was a breeding collapse. The table records 11 nests and no young in 1963, 8 nests and no young in 1971, and 6 nests and no young in 1972. (source) Added up, the nests of 1970 to 1978 raised 12 young in 52 nest-years, about 0.23 per nest, when the Division's own yardstick is 0.70 young per nest just to hold a population steady. (source) The low was 4 nests, reached in 1975 and again in 1979. (source)

Ohio's trouble was part of a national one. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service puts the low for the lower 48 states at 417 nesting pairs in 1963, (source) while its 2007 delisting rule gives about 487 breeding pairs for the same year. (source) The Environmental Protection Agency ordered DDT cancelled on June 14, 1972, and the general ban took effect on December 31, 1972. (source) Ohio's lowest year, 1979, came seven years after that. (source)

Legal protection came in steps. In 1967 the Interior Department listed bald eagles south of 40 degrees north latitude as endangered, and in 1978 it listed them as endangered in 43 states, Ohio among them. (source) The 40th parallel runs just north of downtown Columbus, so the 1967 listing by its wording left out the Lake Erie marshes, where most of Ohio's eagles nested. (source) Ohio began its own endangered species list in 1974 with the bald eagle on it. (source)

How Ohio brought them back

In 1979 the Division of Wildlife began what Shieldcastle called a four-pronged approach: monitor the remaining nests, foster eaglets into them, build relationships with landowners in critical habitat, and rehabilitate injured eagles. (source) In 1980 biologists placed the first fostered eaglet into a wild nest at the Ottawa Shooting Club on Sandusky Bay. (source) The young birds came from zoos and federal breeders; in January 1983 the Fish and Wildlife Service said its Patuxent center had supplied 44 young eagles since 1977 to nine states, Ohio among them. (source)

The eagles recovered in the nursery before they recovered in number. The four nests of 1979 raised four young, and the six nests of 1981 raised nine, (source) but there were still only 11 nests in 1987 and 20 in 1992. (source) The state's goal had been 20 eagle nests by 2000; Shieldcastle recalls that it was topped in 1992 and raised to 36. (source) By 2000 the table shows 63 nests. (source) One year breaks the pattern: in 1991 the table shows 19 nests but only 5 young, and it gives no reason. (source)

Biologists banded Ohio's nestlings from 1983 to 2009, and the volunteer nest-watch program continues. (source) Ohio paid for much of the work with dedicated money, starting with an income tax checkoff created in 1983. (source) Bald eagle license plates followed in July 1999, and by law their contribution may be spent only on acquiring, developing and restoring bald eagle habitat. (source) The bald eagle came off the federal list on June 28, 2007. (source) The Division of Wildlife says it was dropped to threatened in Ohio in 2008 and removed completely in 2011, (source) while its news releases give 2012 for the removal. (source)

Counting the nests: censuses and estimates

Ohio counts eagles two ways, and mixing them up produces false booms. In most years the Division of Wildlife flies five survey blocks of roughly 10 square miles each and scales the change in those blocks up to a statewide estimate. (source) Less often it runs a full census built on public reports that staff check one by one. (source)

The two methods have given very different numbers. The 2019 estimate was 346 nests; (source) the full census the next spring found 707, and the Division wrote that the 2013-2019 estimates had not captured the eagles' spread across the state. (source) The 2012 census had likewise found 281 nests in 59 counties, (source) against an estimate of 213 in the state's table for that year. (source)

The yearly estimates since the 2020 census were 910 nests in 2023 (source) and 841 in 2024, a 7.6 percent drop that the Division called the first decrease since 2013 and tied partly to the 2022 bird flu and a late survey flight. (source) Then the 2025 census, helped by more than 1,800 reports from the public, confirmed 964 active nests, counting only nests with an incubating eagle, eggs or eaglets. (source) The Division called that a 36 percent rise from 2020, (source) but its April 2020 report said the 707 included active, failed and inactive nests, so the two censuses may not have counted the same thing. (source)

Breeding has stayed strong. Nest success was 81.6 percent in 2024, with 1.6 young per active nest, (source) and 78 percent in 2025, with 1.3 young per nest. (source)

Where the nests are

The western Lake Erie marshes are still the stronghold. The 2025 census put 112 nests in Ottawa County, 61 in Sandusky, 40 in Erie, 36 in Seneca, 31 in Wyandot, 29 in Trumbull and 27 in Lucas. (source) Huron (21), Wood (20), and Coshocton, Knox, Licking and Mercer (19 each) round out the 13 counties with the most nests. (source) Meigs was the only county with none. (source)

The eagles have also spread away from the lake. Ottawa, Sandusky, Erie and Lucas together held 104 of the 281 nests in 2012, (source) but 240 of 964 in 2025, about a quarter. (source) The Division's 2020 report found the biggest regional growth in southwestern Ohio, from 9 nests in 2012 to 74 in 2020. (source) Delaware County went from 7 nests in 2012 to 13 in 2020, (source) and to 15 in 2025, when Franklin had 6. (source) In the January 2026 midwinter count, Delaware and Franklin each had 26 eagles reported, tied for the most of any county. (source)

Summit County

Summit County had 2 nests in the 2012 census and 5 in 2020, (source) and the 2025 census list gives it 8. (source) The Division calls its county numbers raw data and subject to change, and the 2025 figure counts only active nests. (source) The newest status report linked from the state's bald eagle page is the 2024 one, which has no county list. (source) Summit Metro Parks' own count in February 2021 was five active nests in the county, the newest a pair at the former Valley View golf course in Akron. (source)

In the Cuyahoga Valley, the national park says the first eagle nest recorded there was built in 2006 at Pinery Narrows in Brecksville; that first nest blew down, a February storm wrecked the 2009 attempt and a March storm in 2011 toppled the nest tree, yet 22 eaglets had fledged there by 2026. (source)

What still kills eagles

Bird flu. Highly pathogenic avian influenza was confirmed in Ohio in March 2022, and the Division of Wildlife reported "an unprecedented number of eagle deaths" across northern Ohio that March and April. (source) Nest success that year fell to 47.8 percent and young per nest to 0.8. (source) The U.S. Department of Agriculture lists 29 Ohio bald eagles confirmed with the H5 virus through October 2026: 9 collected in 2022, 1 in 2023, 2 in 2024, 13 in 2025 and 2 in 2026, plus 2 with no collection date that were detected in 2022 and 2023. Five came from Summit County. (source) Only birds that were found and tested appear on that list. (source)

Lead. A national study in Science tested 1,210 bald and golden eagles from 38 states and found chronic lead exposure in nearly half; it estimated that lead holds bald eagle population growth down by 3.8 percent. (source) In July 2026 the Ohio Wildlife Center in Powell treated an eagle struck by a vehicle on I-315 in Columbus that also had lead poisoning, and called vehicle collisions and lead "two of the most common threats" to bald eagles. (source) The Division of Wildlife's eagle reports give no statewide count of lead-poisoned eagles. (source)

West Nile virus. The virus can kill eagles in numbers: in late 2013 at least 43 bald eagles died around Utah's Great Salt Lake, and all nine examined were infected with West Nile, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. (source) The Division's eagle reports record no comparable Ohio die-off and give no count of West Nile deaths. (source)

Wind turbines. A federal rule published on February 12, 2024 created a general permit for wind projects with relatively low risk to eagles, covering eagles killed or injured incidentally by the turbines; to qualify, turbines must stand at least 660 feet from any bald eagle nest. (source) The Fish and Wildlife Service has approved power pole retrofits and lead abatement as ways for permit holders to make up for eagles lost. (source) The state's eagle reports give no count of eagles killed at Ohio wind farms. (source)

Storms. Weather takes nests too: a Cedar Point refuge nest blown down on June 4, 1981 killed two eaglets, (source) and thunderstorms on August 11, 2021 destroyed six of the eight eagle nests on the main Ottawa refuge complex. (source)

Myths and the record

"Ohio went from 4 eagles to 964." The 4 were nesting pairs found by state staff in 1979; the 964 are active nests confirmed in a 2025 census built on public reports. (source) The fairer line is "from 4 pairs to more than 900 nests." (source)

"Nests doubled in one year." The jump from 346 in 2019 to 707 in 2020 was a change from an estimate to a full census, and the Division said the estimates had been missing nests. (source) (source)

"Banning DDT brought the eagles straight back." The ban took effect at the end of 1972, (source) but Ohio's nests stayed at 4 to 8 until 1986, and the state was also fostering eaglets and guarding nests. (source)

"The eagle came off the endangered list in 1995." In 1995 it was moved from endangered to threatened; it was delisted on June 28, 2007. (source)

"Ohio's eagles were rebuilt from birds imported from Wisconsin or Canada." The sources on the program name zoos, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and the federal Patuxent center as the suppliers of eaglets. (source) None of the program accounts names eagles from other Great Lakes states or Canada as donors. (source)

"Eagles carry off children." The Columbus checklist notes that Lynds Jones had to debunk such stories as early as 1903. (source)

"Eagles live only near Lake Erie." The four marsh counties held about a quarter of the nests in 2025, and 87 counties had nests. (source)

"A golden eagle is much bigger than a bald eagle." Audubon gives the bald eagle a wingspan of 6 feet 8 inches (source) and the golden eagle 6 feet 6 inches. (source)

Stories

The Great Nest of Vermilion

The most famous eagle nest in Ohio history stood near Vermilion. According to the Smithsonian's 1937 account by A. C. Bent, it was built no later than 1890 and used every year until a March storm blew it down in 1925; measured in 1922, it was 12 feet high and 8 1/2 feet across, its rim 81 feet up in the dead top of a shellbark hickory. (source) Eagles had nested in those woods for more than 80 years, in six known nests. (source) Francis H. Herrick, a biology professor at Western Reserve University, spent three springs and summers in the early 1920s recording and photographing the eagles there, and National Geographic published his work in 1929. (source) Herrick reported that the Vermilion eagles were away only six to eight weeks in an ordinary winter, and barely two weeks in the mild winter of 1921-22. (source) The historical marker at the site says the pair built a new nest 13 days after the storm and raised an eaglet that spring, and that Lorain County Metro Parks built replicas of the nest in 2007 and 2020. (source)

Eagles at an Avon power plant, 1951

On February 9, 1951, birders counted six bald eagles, three adults and three young, on the ice at the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company's Avon plant, beside 32 acres of open water crowded with 10,000 to 20,000 mergansers. (source) One eagle stooped for a fish and another struck a merganser in the air. (source) The same issue reported that a pair had nested west of Huron for ten years, and that on March 5, 1951 a great horned owl was found sitting on their nest. (source)

Martha and the museum basement

The Cleveland Museum of Natural History kept four injured eagles that could not be released, in a captive breeding program begun in the 1970s by Harvey Webster and Carl Lutzmann. (source) One female, Martha, bonded with Lutzmann and laid her first fertile egg on the night of March 20, 1984; the chick hatched in an incubator in the museum basement at 10:03 p.m. on April 24 and was placed in a wild Ohio nest. (source) At the Columbus Zoo, 27 eaglets hatched between 1979 and 2005, and 20 were released to the wild. (source)

The nest the eagles ignored

On November 4, 1981, state and federal staff built a stick nest in a strong tree near a pair's cracked nest tree at Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge. (source) The eagles left the old tree but built a nest of their own somewhere else, and the old nest blew out in 60-mile-an-hour winds on March 31, 1982. (source) That year two of Ohio's five active nests were on the refuge complex, and they produced half of the state's eaglets. (source)

Eagles come to Columbus

Franklin County's first nests known to raise young in modern times were found in 2009, at a flooded quarry on the industrial south side of Columbus and near Groveport. (source) In January 2010 Columbus Audubon wrote that eagles had been an exotic rarity around the city even in winter eight to ten years earlier, and had become a regular sight at Hoover Reservoir about six or seven years before. (source) In Cincinnati, a Cardinal Land Conservancy camera has streamed a nest at the mouth of the Little Miami River since 2022, and three eaglets hatched there in March 2026. (source)

Golden eagles in winter

Ohio's other eagle is a winter visitor. The Eastern Golden Eagle Working Group's 2023 plan quotes the Division of Wildlife as saying golden eagles are no longer unheard of, with a steady number drawn each winter to reclaimed mine land in eastern and southeastern Ohio, and notes that no count is published. (source) A 2015 study of the eastern Canadian breeding population, which it put at about 1,236 pairs, mostly in Quebec and Labrador, notes that a few of those birds winter in Michigan, Indiana and Ohio. (source)

Seeing eagles

The Division of Wildlife says Ohio's adult eagles are mostly year-round residents, with the western Lake Erie marshes their stronghold; courtship and nest building can begin in October, and eggs are laid from mid-February to late March. (source) It asks viewers to stay at least 100 yards from a nest, because disturbance can make a pair abandon its eggs. (source) Bald eagle license plates, the tax checkoff for the Endangered Species and Wildlife Diversity Fund and the Ohio Wildlife Legacy Stamp still fund eagle habitat work. (source)

Timeline

• 1878-1880: Six Franklin County bald eagles, shot or poisoned, reach one taxidermist. (source)
• 1890: The Great Nest near Vermilion is built by this year; it is used every year until 1925. (source)
• 1959: The state's nest series begins with 15 nests and 5 young. (source)
• 1963: Ohio's 11 nests fledge no young. (source)
• 1967: Bald eagles south of the 40th parallel are listed as federally endangered. (source)
• 1972: The federal DDT ban takes effect on December 31. (source)
• 1974: Ohio creates its endangered species list, with the bald eagle on it. (source)
• 1978: The bald eagle is listed as endangered in 43 states, Ohio included. (source)
• 1979: Ohio is down to four nesting pairs; the recovery program begins. (source)
• 1980: The first fostered eaglet goes into a wild nest at the Ottawa Shooting Club. (source)
• 1983: Biologists begin banding Ohio's eagle nestlings. (source)
• 1983: Ohio's income tax checkoff for wildlife begins. (source)
• 1984: Martha's chick hatches in the Cleveland museum basement on April 24. (source)
• 1992: Nests reach 20, the goal set for 2000. (source)
• 1999: Bald eagle license plates go on sale in July. (source)
• 2006: Cuyahoga Valley's first recorded eagle nest is built. (source)
• 2007: The bald eagle is removed from the federal list on June 28. (source)
• 2012: A statewide census finds 281 nests in 59 counties. (source)
• 2012: The bald eagle comes off Ohio's endangered species list, by the date in the Division of Wildlife's news releases. (source)
• 2020: The next census finds 707 nests. (source)
• 2022: Bird flu reaches Ohio in March; nest success falls to 47.8 percent. (source)
• 2024: The yearly estimate falls 7.6 percent to 841 nests; nest success recovers to 81.6 percent. (source)
• 2025: The census confirms 964 active nests in 87 counties. (source)
• 2026: The January midwinter count records 715 eagles, 592 of them adults. (source)

Sources

• ohiodnr.gov: America's National Bird Thriving in the Buckeye State (2025 census)
• ohiodnr.gov: Bald eagle species page
• web.archive.org: Bald eagle species page, 2020 breeding update (November 2025 copy)
• ohiohistory.org: The Ohio Bald Eagle Recovery: A Success Story
• dam.assets.ohio.gov: Bald Eagle Breeding Population Status 2024
• ohiodnr.gov: Bald eagle report 2022
• dam.assets.ohio.gov: Bald eagle 2020 census report
• dam.assets.ohio.gov: Bald eagle population status 2019
• web.archive.org: Ohio Division of Wildlife eagle nest table, 1959-2004
• dam.assets.ohio.gov: Wildlife Tax Checkoff Fund summary, Pub 5495
• 1808delaware.com: 707 bald eagle nests in Ohio (ODNR 2020 census release)
• blufftonicon.com: 715 bald eagles reported during January count (ODNR release)
• fws.gov: 2007 final rule removing the bald eagle from the federal list
• fws.gov: Bald eagle numbers soaring (2007)
• fws.gov: 1983 news release on Patuxent eaglets
• iris.fws.gov: Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge Complex annual narrative, 1982
• fws.gov: Wind energy eagle incidental take permits
• epa.gov: DDT ban takes effect (1972)
• aphis.usda.gov: HPAI detections in wild birds
• doi.org: Slabe et al., lead exposure in eagles, Science (2022)
• usgs.gov: West Nile virus and the 2013 Great Salt Lake bald eagle die-off
• nps.gov: Bald eagles return to Cuyahoga Valley
• friendsofottawanwr.org: Bald eagle nest updates
• web.archive.org: Ohio Division of Wildlife eagle nest table, 1959-2012
• codes.ohio.gov: Ohio Revised Code 4503.572, bald eagle plates
• archive.org: A. C. Bent, Life Histories of North American Birds of Prey, USNM Bulletin 167 (1937)
• hmdb.org: The Great Nest historical marker
• kirtlandbirdclub.org: Cleveland Bird Calendar, 1951
• cmnh.org: The recovery of the bald eagle in Ohio
• columbuszoo.org: Caring for bald eagles at the Columbus Zoo
• columbusaudubon.org: Creature feature, bald eagle
• columbusaudubon.org: W. D. Whan, The Birds of Franklin County, Ohio
• columbusaudubon.org: Winter eagles over Columbus (2010)
• metroparkstoledo.com: Eagle comeback in Ohio
• thebeacon.net: Bald eagles, a success story that began in Ottawa County
• glc.org: Akron Beacon Journal, Summit and Valley Girl (2021)
• delawaresource.com: Ohio Wildlife Center treats injured bald eagles (2026)
• wvxu.org: Cincinnati eagle livestreams (2026)
• ohiocoopliving.com: Survivor story, bald eagles
• audubon.org: Bald eagle field guide
• audubon.org: Golden eagle field guide
• hawkmountain.org: Eastern Golden Eagle Conservation Plan (2023)
• fs.usda.gov: Morneau et al., golden eagles in eastern Canada (2015)