Raptor rebirth

For most of the afternoon, Marc Stamer had been searching the treetops for a bald eagle, but his usual luck had deserted him.

Each time the U.S. Forest Service biologist pulled his truck to the side of the road, he methodically scanned the tall pines near the shoreline of Big Bear Lake with binoculars, looking for the national symbol. And when that didn’t work, he switched to a high-powered spotting scope.

Still, no eagles. Finally, he decided to try a place where a breeding pair spent a good deal of their time during the day. As soon as he steered to a stop, Stamer spied a majestic raptor sitting on the top branch of a nearby tree, as if waiting for him to arrive.

“That house over there is owned by a doctor named George Burns,” Stamer said. “So we call the eagles George and Gracie.” (Stamer’s guess was that this was George.)

He grabbed the spotting scope again and trained it on the high perch to see the giant bird’s feathers ruffling in a light wind. “Some people just start to cry when they see one,” Stamer said. “Not only because of the bird itself, but also the symbolism.”

The federal government officially declared the bald eagle an endangered species in 1967 after the population was decimated by a number of factors, particularly DDT, which was outlawed in 1972. Now upgraded to threatened status, the species has stabilized, and L.A.’s nearby lakes are a hub of the California rebirth.

Stamer is seeking volunteers to help him in the final two winter counts of the eagles, which travel south each year from as far away as Canada to the forests of Southern California. The final two counts will be on Feb. 14 and March 13 at Big Bear Lake, Lake Silverwood, Lake Arrowhead and Lake Hemet.

The winter counts, a tradition since 1978, track eagles around the lakes, giving Stamer a reasonably good fix on the migratory population of the birds in the San Bernardino and San Jacinto mountains. This year, there have been two counts, one in December and another earlier this month. Four eagles were spotted in the first count of the Big Bear area, and 14 were counted in January. That squares with eagle observations in the past, in which the numbers tend to increase through February, then slack off as the raptors begin heading north toward their nesting grounds. Besides the Big Bear eagles, two others were spotted at Silverwood, one at Arrowhead and one at Lake Hemet.

The results of the count will be reported to the national survey, which uses the tally to track the population and migratory habits of the once-endangered bird.

The number of nesting bald eagle pairs in the U.S. had shrunk to an alarmingly low 417 in 1963, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. But by 2000, the number had recovered to 6,471 in the continental U.S., with major populations in Florida and the Pacific Northwest. In addition, more than 30,000 bald eagles live in Alaska.

Last year, in a major breakthrough, two eagles were born in the wild in Southern California -- an event not seen here since the 1930s. It gave scientists hope that the ravages of DDT are over and that eagles have overcome another reproductive obstacle. But in a reminder of still precarious times, the birds were spotted in a nest at a shooting range used by the Lake Hemet Municipal Water District rangers, which was immediately closed.Stamer said the eagles are reasonably easy to spot around Big Bear Lake, especially in the morning. But he urged bird watchers to avoid sudden movements and loud noises that might spook them. The best place to view them, he said, is from inside a car.

“We try to be as unobtrusive as possible,” he said.

To volunteer for the counts: call Marc Stamer at the Big Bear Ranger Station, (909) 866-3437, Ext. 3216, or Anne Poopatanapong at the San Jacinto Ranger Station, (909) 382-2935.