Campbell Proffitt said the bald eagles near his restaurant are special in different ways to different people.
“I remember, last year, we had a man who had terminal cancer who used to come and sit under the nest on the little benches we had out there,” Proffitt said. “He spent a lot of days out there, until he passed away. I thought it was cool that he got to enjoy that.”
The death of a bald eagle on Monday in Columbus drew outcry from the community. Columbus Police Department initially believed the eagle had been shot, which is a federal crime. Mississippi Wildlife and Fisheries’ initial investigation shows the eagle may have died from some sort of trauma.
Proffitt’s Porch, located on Officers Lake Road, is home to a nesting pair of bald eagles. The restaurant sits on the north bank of a small lake, while the eagles nest in a tree on the northeast bank.
The birds have nested near the restaurant for about 18 years and hatched 22 eaglets. Proffitt said they’ve moved around in that span. They first nested on the south side of the lake, for about four or five years, until a storm destroyed the nest. They then moved farther away to a nest near Highway 50, then another nest on a lake behind the restaurant where Proffitt said they stayed for about seven years.
After that, they moved to their current spot, and Proffitt said they’ve stayed there for the past four or so years.
The eagles have gained a measure of local fame over that time. Proffitt said some customers come to the restaurant just to see them, and he sometimes notices people stopping to watch across the lake for them from Officers Lake Road. But when the birds first arrived, he said, people were skeptical that they were actually bald eagles.
“I would tell people that we have them out there and they would say, ‘Yeah, you have buzzards,'” Proffitt said. “They didn’t believe me for a long time.”
Proffitt said he’s honored the eagles nest near his restaurant, and he checks on them regularly. He said he had to learn more about the birds as the community became more aware of them because he often fielded questions about them. Before they began nesting near his restaurant, he said he had only seen eagles at the zoo or at Dollywood near Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Now, the birds are a part of his daily life.
“We take pride in it, for sure,” he said.
The Refuge
The Sam D. Hamilton Noxubee Wildlife Refuge is also home to a number of bald eagles, depending on the season.
Refuge Director Steve Reagan said the park has hosted eagles for decades.
“The first eagles we know of showed up in the 70s,” he said. “They’ve been pretty consistent on the refuge and pretty reliable year to year on where they nest.”
Reagan said the refuge is home to two pairs of eagles that are nesting with young, and there are always other eagles nearby. During the winter, when eagles fly south for warmer weather, the refuge is home to 16 bald eagles and two golden eagles.
“They’re a big draw for us,” he said. “A lot of people will come down every day to try and see them. We have one eagle nest that’s pretty accessible that you can see, and there are some folks who come each and every day to see what the progress is.”
The Friends of the Refuge, a nonprofit support group for the Noxubee Wildlife Refuge, hosts an annual eagle viewing. Reagan said it’s typically held in March as eaglets fledge — grow feathers large enough for flight.
The viewing is a popular event.
“It’s like with anything wildlife, but eagles are so stunning and so pretty with that white head,” Reagan said. “If you ever get a chance to see the breeding pair interacting with each other, especially when we’re getting into nesting season like this, they’ll actually play in the air. They’ll grab each other’s feet and sort of tumble out of the air, and the call they make is so distinctive.”
Eagle populations
Mississippi’s bald eagle population has grown in recent decades, as has the population across the United States, after falling perilously low in the 1950s.
Wes Burger, an avian ecologist at Mississippi State University, said there are an estimated 45 breeding pairs in Mississippi. He said they tend to be most common along Mississippi River, the Gulf Coast, up the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway and near the state’s large reservoirs.
“They’re common in the sense that it’s not uncommon to see them, but they’re not abundant,” Burger said. “We do have several breeding pairs in the immediate vicinity. There’s a breeding pair on the Tennessee-Tombigbee near Columbus. In the past there’s been another breeding pair farther north up the Tombigbee near Town Creek.”
Burger said experts believed there were about 300,000 bald eagles in the U.S. in the 1800s. However, eagle populations declined sharply due to hunting, habitat and environmental threats. By the mid-20th century, Burger said, there were less than 500 pairs of eagles in the lower 48 states.
Political action — including the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act in 1940 and the Endangered Species Preservation Act in 1966 — took steps to introduce protections for eagles. In 1972, chlorinated hydrocarbons such as DDT, which severely hindered bald eagle reproduction among posing other environmental risks, were banned. Because of those efforts and the work of conservationists, Burger said, the eagle population began to rebound.
He said eagles were downgraded from an endangered species to a protected one in 1995, and deemed a recovered species in 2007.
“The recovery of the bald eagle is one of conservation’s great success stories,” Burger said. “It reflects the three-pronged approach that is: protect the population, protect the habit and protect the environment. Citizens of the U.S. are the beneficiaries of that, and to be able to see this great, majestic bird is the benefit.”
Alex Holloway was formerly a reporter with The Dispatch.
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