ERROL, N.H. - Ian Drew, deputy manager of the Lake Umbagog National Wildlife Refuge, delivered the somber news: “They either took down the nest or it blew down in a storm, or the tree may simply be too weak now.’’
This was no ordinary tree Drew was referring to. This was the towering skeleton of a white pine near Leonard Pond. It sticks up from an otherwise lush little bog island, overseeing the junction of the Androscoggin and Magalloway rivers and 7-mile-long and 1-mile-wide Lake Umbagog.
Even without the tree, the confluence of two mighty rivers into a wide-open lake - with mountains peering over endless pine shores on the horizon, and swamps and bogs to the immediate left and right - is one of the most beautiful sights in all of New England. But the tree played an important role in the recovery of wildlife in the state.
It had sprouted before the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Sitting at a perfect spot with a 360-degree view to scope out breakfast, lunch, and dinner, the tree played host to untold numbers of bald eagles until 1949, when the pesticide DDT drove them to the brink of extinction. This was the last tree in New Hampshire where eagles nested in the DDT era. There were an estimated half-million bald eagles in North America in 1782, when the bird was declared the national symbol by the Continental Congress. In the early 1960s, the contiguous 48 were down to 417 pairs. In New England, the remaining 40 pairs hung on in Maine.
The tree went 40 years without eagles. A little over midway through that stretch, the country banned DDT in 1972 and the waters slowly purified. In 1989, the birds returned and the tree was the first in New Hampshire to see nesting eagles again. Over the last two decades, despite the tree bleaching white in death, it has been the crib to over 20 eaglets.
New Hampshire last year had a record 15 nests with 24 fledged chicks. The last three years have seen more eaglets (57) than in the previous 17 years combined (50) going back to 1989. Umbagog had four nests last year.
Drew said that the other three nests hatched two chicks apiece. But there was no hiding the meaning of the loss of the nest by Leonard Pond, which up to last year had produced nearly a fifth of all the eaglets statewide in the modern era. Drew has a biologist’s instinct that the eagles may never use this tree again.
“My gut tells me this is it. . . . I get the sense that the eagles sense the tree is just too bare now to hold up their nest,’’ he said.
