Around mid-March, photographers and wildlife enthusiasts around White Rock Lake may have noticed something happening in the bald eagle nest in Lake Highlands Park.
Photo by Mark Fletcher.
That’s because, according to City of Dallas department of park and recreation urban biologist Chris Morris, the eagles affectionately known as ‘Nick and Nora” have successfully hatched a new pair of eaglets.
Park staff observed the end of mating behavior toward the middle of February, he said.
“The first time that we saw the end of mating or courtship behavior was right around the 15th of February,” Morris said. “So working that through 30 or so days, that puts us about the 15th of March. So the 15th of March was probably the very first day that they could have hatched”
Morris said he first observed “hatchling-like attendance behavior” in the nest from the adult raptors around March 20. As the eaglets grow, the adults will alternate watching over the nest and hunting around the lake. ‘Nick,’ the male adult, will be seen bringing back whole fish and other meals while the adult female, ‘Nora,’ will deliver smaller portions.
The pair of adult eagles was first sighted around White Rock Lake in 2021. Since landing in our area, the eagles have navigated nest failures, cracked eggs and threats from straight-line winds. Last year, after successfully hatching their first pair of eaglets, the eagles lost one of the hatchlings in a May storm when gale-force winds caused their nest to collapse.
One of the adults perched in a tree last year. Photo by Alex Martin.
“We’ve seen several generations of this happening, we lost one of them the last cycle, and they were able to save one, which is good, and now they’re doing two again,” said Mark Fletcher, a photographer who has followed the eagles since their arrival in our area. “And so everybody is kind of rooting for them.”
Morris said that around the first week of June, neighbors can expect to begin seeing branching behavior from the eaglets as they hop from branch to branch around the nest. As their flight feathers develop, they will begin to fly short distances before becoming capable of powered flight sometime in August.
After learning to fly, the eaglets will “study” catching their own food.
“The most exciting part is going to be when they’re learning how to fish,” Fletcher said. “What they generally do is they’ll go out to Sunset Bay and sit on a branch out there, and the eaglet will watch the mom or dad pick up a fish, and they imitate that behavior, and that’s fun to see because as a photographer, that’s really a good action shot to watch an eagle pick up a fish out of the water.”
The nest is located in an American sycamore in Lake Highlands Park. An area of roughly 300 square feet has been cordoned off to protect the nest from disturbances, as was the case for last year’s hatching.
With young eaglets in the nest, Morris said the eagles may become more territorial. With that in mind, area residents should keep small dogs on leashes and watch young children closely. It’s also important, he said, to “be a good neighbor” to East Dallas’ raptor residents, with neighbors encouraged to keep noise, bright lights and drones far away.
“Be a good neighbor around our Eagles so that we don’t have any incidents, and they continue to nest here in White Rock,” Morris said. “That’s one of my biggest fears, is that one of these times, they’re gonna have a bad interaction and they’re gonna go, ‘You know what? We don’t want to do White Rock anymore.’ And maybe hopefully they go over to Bachmann, so they’re at least in a Dallas lake, but they could straight up leave us and go down to Houston.”
