NEW ARRIVAL!!!...In Your Uncle Sam's Neighborhood

[Your Uncle Sam]

NEW ARRIVAL!! ....in Your Uncle Sam’s Hometown

Pembroke Pines - Wings extended to their full span, the bald eagle swept toward its nest. A fuzzy gray head popped up above the rim. It was lunch time.

The eagle settled into its home of sticks and grass, tore at some sort of prey with its yellow beak — oblivious to the cars and trucks rushing by on Pines Boulevard — and began gently feeding bits of food to its chicks.

The celebrated bald eagles of Pembroke Pines, the first nesting pair in Broward County since the 1970s, have returned, and in the past four weeks they have produced three eaglets.

A committee of conservationists and government officials is working to make sure the eagles are protected.

"We're just absolutely excited the eagles have come back to our city," Pembroke Pines Mayor Frank Ortis said Friday, standing in the traffic island of Pines Boulevard as the eagle fed its young. "It puts us on the map. It's a great, great story for our city."

Located about 200 feet south of Pines Boulevard just east of U.S. 27, the nest looks down on the barrel-tile roofs of a housing development across the street.

The 24 acres around the nest are owned by the city, and Ortis would not rule out eventually selling the land for development. But he said the city would make sure sufficient undeveloped land remained for the eagles to keep their nest. A draft amendment to the Pembroke Pines comprehensive plan would require the city to "protect and preserve bald eagle nesting sites" and to adopt an eagle sanctuary protection ordinance.

Conservationists said they are satisfied with the city's response.

"The city has been totally cooperative with us," said Doug Young, president of South Florida Audubon Society and chairman of the Eagle Sanctuary Steering Committee.

But Young and other conservationists are concerned about public safety, because a lot of people are stopping their cars and wandering into the road to watch the eagles.

The eagles, which successfully raised two eaglets last year, left for the summer, and returned to their Pembroke Pines nest in September, said Ken Schneider, a retired physician and member of South Florida Audubon, who blogs about the nest at http://www.rosyfinch.com.

They found their home battered to about half its size by wind and set to work building it up with sticks and grass.

Although most eagles produce two chicks, these produced three. The youngest is considerably smaller, and Schneider said it may not survive because its siblings were competing with it for food. But there are hopeful signs: "We've seen the mother actually reach with a morsel of food, bypassing the others, and feeding the little chick."

And Lynda White, EagleWatch coordinator for Florida Audubon, said she's optimistic about the smallest chick, saying young eagles grow so rapidly that the smaller sibling will generally grow big enough to hold its own. "He should be fine," she said.

The city plans a contest among schoolchildren to name the three chicks.

The eagles prey mostly on fish, caught in nearby lakes and canals, although they also kill cattle egrets, white ibises and small mammals. One eagle brought a rabbit to the nest, Schneider said. And he saw one return with a 3-foot-long snake.

Like other eagles, these rob ospreys of fish they had caught. Schneider said he's seen the angry osprey chase the eagle, but the eagle flies clear of its own nest for a while, reluctant to bring a large and irritated predator near its young.

Once an emblem of the decline of America's wildlife, the bald eagle has made a remarkable recovery, largely due to the banning of pesticide DDT in 1972.

The bald eagle was removed from the endangered species list in 2007, although it remains illegal to harm them. In the past 24 years, the bald eagle population of Florida has grown 300 percent, with an estimated 1,340 active nests counted last year, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. A 2009 report listed one nest in Miami-Dade County, one in Broward and eight in Palm Beach County, most in the northwestern part of the county.

On Friday afternoon, people with binoculars and cameras gazed up at the adult eagles perched in a cluster of dead melaleuca trees next to the nest.

Marilyn Wilde, of Plantation, showed up with her husband Jay and a Nikon camera with a telephoto lens.

"We think it's fascinating that we have a bald eagle nest right in our backyard," she said.

LIFE!.....HOW SWEET IT IS

[Vivian Blink]

OMG! This is wonderful news! How fortunate for the residents of Pembroke Pines! I'm sending this to my friend who lives in Pembroke Pines in case she hasn't read about it!

[Linda Maddox]

This is great news! I have a smile on my face, I love looking at the pictures! Thank you so much for brightening up my day! Please keep us updated!