Bald Eagles are building nests for their young. How Big Hot Tubs Are
This spring, bald eagles all over the country are building nests for their young. People who watch them in person or on live cams may wonder how big those nests are.
An answer can be found in a picture going around social media that shows a guard sitting in a five-foot-wide, three-foot-deep replica nest. Those are about the right sizes for a hot tub for four people.
The picture was first shared by the Forest Park Nature Center in Illinois last year. The Facebook post says that the fake nest is kept at Ohio’s Hueston Woods State Park.
But bald eagle nests can be a lot bigger. The Forest Park Nature Center said that the biggest nest ever found was “9.5 feet across, 20 feet deep, and almost 6,000 pounds!”
If you believe the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, that nest was built by eagles in St. Petersburg, Florida. On its “All About Birds” page, the lab says, “Another famous nest was in Vermilion, Ohio. It was shaped like a wine glass and weighed almost two metric tons.” Before the tree fell, it was used for 34 years.
Most of the time, nests are made in the largest conifers, close to their strong trunks. Even though both parents build the nest, it is said that the female does most of the arranging of the sticks, branches, and soft materials.
Once they become adults, eaglets go on “nomadic exploration of vast territories” for about four years. They can fly hundreds of miles every day. For example, young bald eagles born in California have been as far north as Alaska.
