Bald eagles are found throughout North America, and they live near water; how they see, hunt, nest and raise their young leads to a harder story: how their numbers fell, and how they came back.

Bald eagles have large, forward-facing eyes and probably see well with both eyes together, and a bald eagle sees at least four times better than a person; its eyes cannot move from side to side, so it turns its whole head to look around, and it has little sense of smell.

A hungry bald eagle waits on a favorite perch until it sees a fish near the surface of the water, and it also hunts by flying low over water or land; a bald eagle is reported to dive at speeds up to about 100 miles per hour (160 kilometers per hour). Its fishing happens at the surface: it takes fish from near the water's surface and does not dive under the water.

An eagle grabs its prey with the sharp talons on its toes, and the tendons and tendon sheaths in its legs ratchet its toes shut, so it can hold on for a long time without tiring the muscles; its grip is about 10 times as strong as a person's, and it can carry prey up to about half its own body weight. Fish is a bald eagle's favorite food, and it also eats ducks and small animals such as rabbits.

Bald eagles that nest in the north generally fly south in winter, to open water, and in winter many bald eagles gather near rivers where salmon come to spawn.

When they are not nesting, bald eagles often rest together at shared roosts, and eagles pick roost trees for their height, their width and the shelter they give from bad weather, usually within a kilometer of water. Scientists think eagles gather in winter roosts to socialize or to learn where prey is and how much there is.

Eagle nests are usually in tall trees, but they have also been found on cliffs, on the ground and on towers and power poles, and in the tallest trees a nest can be built 180 feet or more above the ground. In treeless places such as Alaska, bald eagles nest on the ground, often on cliffs, sea stacks or ridges that are easy to fly to.

A bald eagle pair builds its nest over one to three months before the eggs are laid, and the pair comes back to the same nest year after year and adds more sticks, twigs and grass. Eagles nesting in Alaska reuse a nest for 13 years on average, while nests in southern Florida and Saskatchewan are used for about 5 years; some nests weigh as much as a ton, and as of November 2026, the largest recorded bald eagle nest, found in Florida, was 20 feet deep.

A bald eagle pair most often lays two eggs, and sometimes one or three, about 36 hours apart, which raises the chance that at least one egg hatches when conditions are best, and both parents take turns keeping the eggs warm, and mothers sit on the eggs about 3 to 7 times more often than fathers do, and the eggs hatch after about 35 days.

A newborn bald eagle weighs about 60 grams and may gain up to 180 grams a day, and the nestlings are fed 4 to 5 times a day and are kept covered nearly all the time for about 4 weeks, and young eagles stay in the nest for 10 to 12 weeks.

Bald eagles were once thought to take chickens, lambs and livestock, and they were shot to remove a perceived threat; the first big decline began in the mid to late 1800s, and lead shot swallowed with carrion was also a major problem for eagles before lead shot for waterfowl hunting was phased out in 1991.

The insecticide DDT got into fish, and eagles that ate them laid eggs with shells too thin to last; DDT dissolves in fat and builds up as it passes up the food chain, which put top predators such as bald eagles at great risk, and in 1963 only 417 nesting pairs of bald eagles were known in the lower 48 states.

Congress passed the Bald Eagle Protection Act in 1940, and a 1962 amendment added the golden eagle; in 1967 the Secretary of the Interior listed bald eagles south of the 40th parallel under the Endangered Species Preservation Act, and the United States banned DDT for most uses in 1972. In 1978 bald eagles were listed as endangered in the lower 48 states, except in five states where they were listed as threatened; they were never listed in Alaska, and listing the eagle as endangered let partners speed recovery with captive breeding, reintroduction, law enforcement and nest site protection.

In July 1995 the lower 48 states' bald eagles were reclassified from endangered to the less critical category of threatened, and on June 28, 2007, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced the bald eagle's removal from the list of threatened and endangered species, while federal law forbids harming bald eagles, their nests or their eggs.

In 2007 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimated at least 9,789 nesting pairs of bald eagles in the contiguous United States, and by 2009 the lower 48 states had an estimated 72,434 bald eagles, including 30,548 breeding pairs, and as of November 2026, estimates from 2018 to 2019 put the lower 48 states at 316,700 bald eagles, including 71,467 breeding pairs.

As of November 2026, the IUCN Red List rates bald eagles Least Concern because their population is growing and their range is large; threats include contamination from coal power plants, mercury and climate change. What does an eagle need to go on thriving? Bald eagles need three things: enough food, nest sites close to the food, and reasonable freedom from disturbance while nesting.

Words to know

• roosts: resting places
• carrion: dead animals
• contiguous: touching, joined
• spawn: lay eggs
• reintroduction: bringing back