BELLOWS FALLS-Brattleboro resident John Lowrey has been watching and photographing bald eagles in the area for the past three years.
“There are 13 nests that I watch between Vernon and North Windsor,” Lowrey said. “All have nesting pairs of adults and, in 2025, eight of the nests that I monitor regularly all had two eaglets born and fledged successfully.”
The year before, “they all had only one and they all fledged with success,” he said.
The return of the bald eagle to the northern watershed of the Connecticut River is one of the great success stories of the restoration of an endangered species.
Biologists explain that saving the bald eagle was far less a great feat of human intervention in nature than it was a matter of getting humans out of the way and allowing nature to function as it should.
Younger folk might find it hard to understand the excitement their parents and grandparents often exhibit at the sight of a bald eagle. They’ve never known a time when these birds weren’t around.
But any Vermonter over age 50 not only remembers when seeing a bald eagle in the Connecticut River Valley was an extremely rare occurrence, as they had all but disappeared from this region by the 1930s. They also remember a time when these magnificent birds were in danger of becoming extinct.
Adopted as the national emblem in 1782, over the next century and a half the bald eagle population was decimated by habitat loss, hunting, and shooting.
Congress passed the Bald Eagle Protection Act in 1940, which prohibited the killing and possession of the birds.
But in the 1940s and 1950s widespread use of DDT as a pesticide caused the eggs of the bald eagles to become too thin. This caused massive reproductive failure and, by 1963, only a little over 400 nesting pairs of bald eagles remained in the lower 48 states.
Bald eagles were one of the first species listed under the Endangered Species Act in 1973, and their population has grown to more than 300,000 in the contiguous U.S., with more than 70,000 estimated nesting pairs.
The bald eagle was removed from the endangered species list in 2007.
This has been the result of several factors, giving the eagle’s natural resilience a chance to develop without environmental threats.
DDT use was banned in the U.S. in 1972, and the bald eagle has been the focus of over 40 years of conservation efforts that have included habitat protection and programs that reintroduced the birds to their natural habitat.
In the Connecticut River Valley, all these factors were a vital part of the return of the bald eagle, starting in the early 1980s, when the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife (DFW) began a bald eagle reintroduction program at the Quabbin Reservoir, 15 miles from the river in central Massachusetts.
The DFW imported orphaned eaglets from the Great Lakes region and Canada, raising them to adulthood to establish a new breeding population. Those eagles eventually expanded into the Connecticut River basin and nesting pairs worked their way up the river into Vermont and New Hampshire.
Preserving habitat that bald eagles need to survive, including cleaning up and protecting the river and riverbanks and forested floodplains along the Connecticut, has been vital for bald eagles’ comeback.
The first nesting pair of bald eagles were recorded on Lake Umbagog in New Hampshire in 1988. By 2002, nesting pairs were recorded in Vermont along the Connecticut River. Successful nesting, with living offspring, was verified in 2008.
Tall trees for nesting and hunting and an abundant supply of fish for food are key factors in the eagles’ resurgence. In addition, conservationists have taken a few other special practical steps.
Some of the earliest nesting eagles lost their eggs or newly hatched eaglets eaten by predators like raccoons, prompting the DFW to install metal sheeting around the trees to prevent predators from being able to reach the nests.
According to the Connecticut River Conservancy, by 2023, 32 nests had appeared along the Connecticut River between New Hampshire and Vermont. By 2025, New Hampshire reached a new high of 128 nesting pairs statewide, and Vermont was up to 38, with most of those along the Connecticut River.
Nests up and down the river
Lowrey’s interest in the eagles goes much further back than three years. He said his “dear friend,” Tom Manning, was part of a volunteer program at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst which involved trapping three of the nesting pairs from the Quabbin Reservoir and relocating them to the tidal pool above the Vernon Dam in the early to mid-1980s.
“The rest is history, and it’s all fact. We all owe Tom a salute of thanks,” Lowrey said.
This year, he has been keeping track of several active nests including one near the Massachusetts state line, and one below and another north of the Hinsdale, New Hampshire, boat ramp.
Around Brattleboro, one bald eagle pair is nesting near the Riverside Industrial Center, and another at the Retreat Meadows.
There are other nesting pairs along the Connecticut River in Chesterfield, New Hampshire and in Westminster, and a pair frequently seen in Bellows Falls nests across the river in North Walpole, New Hampshire.
Lowrey said he has recently learned of a nest a couple of miles north of the North Walpole one. He also keeps an eye on two others along the Vermont side of the river north of Springfield.
In addition, there are nesting birds on the West River north of Townshend Dam, and on the shore of Lake Spofford in New Hampshire.
Lowrey said that “all the nests currently have sitting mothers on the nests,” and some eggs are hatching. He is also keeping his eye on nesting peregrine falcons in Dummerston, another successful returning species.
Volunteers monitor the progress
Lowrey, and Craig Mellish of North Walpole, whose photos accompany this article, are among the many enthusiastic bird watchers who watch and photograph the returned bald eagles.
Mellish is no stranger to documenting the world of nature. A member of the creative team of Walpole-based documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, he worked as co-producer of the documentary series The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, visiting and filming more than 40 national parks for the project.
Many of these amateur ornithologists share their findings with the fish and wildlife agencies of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, as well as the National Audubon Society, and other organizations monitoring the bald eagles, peregrine falcons, and other wildlife, helping to create an extensive record and data bank about these species.
“I’ll let folks know how many chicks are born within the next week or so,” Lowrey said. “The Dummerston falcons are there at the quarry and active — I’ll monitor them also.”
As Lowrey describes his experiences with these great birds, his enthusiasm is palpable.
“Bald eagles have around a 35-day incubation period and breed toward the end of February,” he explained. “They return to their lifetime nests to rebuild and repair in January, and then all hell breaks loose if you love wildlife.
“By the time they fledge in late June, they are already bigger than turkey vultures, which is tectonically amazing!” Lowrey said.
This News item by Robert F. Smith was written for The Commons.