By Jeremy Cox
Chesapeake Bay Journal
Some eagle-eyed wildlife biologists have made a surprising discovery on Poplar Island.
That’s the island in the Maryland part of the Chesapeake Bay that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Maryland Port Authority have been rebuilding for the past 25 years. What was once almost entirely open water is now more than 1,700 acres of land surrounded by rocks.
One of the main goals behind the island’s creation was to restore some of the habitat that waterfowl and shorebirds have lost around the Chesapeake due to sea level rise, erosion and coastal development. At last count, about 40 different species of birds have successfully nested in the cottonwood and given birth to babies.
But an iconic species was not among them… until now.
On May 2 of this year, a veteran U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service scientist named Craig Koppie climbed a cottonwood tree on a spit of higher ground on the north side of the island. He looked toward a stick-laden nest known to have been built by bald eagles the previous fall. Inside were a pair of newborn eaglets: a male and a female.
“It’s that quote that says, ‘If you build it, they will come,'” said Peter McGowan, a fisheries and wildlife biologist who has been involved in the Poplar project since the mid-1990s. “If you have this nice habitat, the Things will move and they will move quickly. “You never know what’s going to happen and that’s one of the best parts of the job.”
McGowan said he is not surprised that eagles nest on the island. He thought it would only be a matter of time. Still, the dynamics behind the island’s reconstruction did not make it a likely candidate to host eagles.
The original Poplar Island once stretched across more than 1,100 acres a few miles west of Tilghman Island on the east coast. At its peak, Poplar was home to a population of about 100 people. There were several farms, a school, a church, a post office and a sawmill.
However, like dozens of other low-lying islands around the Chesapeake Bay, Poplar was ravaging. By the 1920s, the last residents had fled to higher ground. By the late 1990s, only a few acres of land remained.
A federal wildlife official placed purple bands on the legs of two newborn eagles on Maryland’s Poplar Island in May 2024 to help later identify them. Photo by Craig Koppie/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Enter the Paul S. Sarbanes Ecosystem Restoration Project. The project, named after the U.S. senator from Maryland who championed the effort, involves rebuilding the island using mud dredged from Baltimore’s shipping channels to keep its harbor open to shipping.
The first delivery of sludge occurred in 2001 and the last is expected to arrive in the mid-2030s.
To make the island as hospitable as possible to water-loving birds, engineers designed Poplar to protrude only slightly above the surrounding tide. The landscape is largely made up of mudflats and salt marshes. The only trees planted so far have been a few in a small test plot.
That doesn’t bode well for eagles, which generally seek out trees as a place to nest. But nature seems to have intervened on their behalf, McGowan said.
The poplar tree that houses the young eagles emerged on its own. It is part of a stand of trees on about an acre of slightly higher ground surrounded by swamps. Despite the harsh environment, some have grown more than 60 feet tall, McGowan estimates.
Eagles have been seen flying and hunting around Poplar since the early days of its restoration, he noted. A stone’s throw from Poplar is tree-lined Coaches Island and its cache of four eagle nests (two of which are active).
But McGowan and his colleagues had to wait about 20 years into the project before they noticed the first signs that eagles were trying to nest in Poplar. It all started with the effort of a pair of eagles to build a nest on top of the metal grating of a water control structure in 2020.
“Obviously it wasn’t the best place for an eagle to nest,” he said.
The nest did not last. A second attempt to build a spillway the following year also failed. Then the scientists noticed a mound of sticks growing on a poplar tree where a treetop had been. It was too big for the branches supporting it and eventually fell from the tree.
Another nest in the same tree began to take shape last fall. McGowan can’t say for sure if its builders are the same eagles who expanded the masthead, but he suspects they are. This time, the nest was more centered on the trunk and was less likely to fall over.
In March, the amount of time the eagles spent perched on the nest suggested there were eggs inside. The ascent of Koppie in May confirmed the presence of two harriers. Before descending, he placed purple bands on their legs, identifying one bird as “09/E” and the other as “10/E.”
Disaster nearly struck at the end of May, when a strong storm tore the nest from the tree. The biologists quickly rebuilt a new nest on a nearby post and placed the eaglets there. Soon, their parents returned to caring for them, McGowan said.
The young birds will probably take flight in June, McGowan said. Will your parents try again in the future? McGowan is optimistic that this will be the case.
“That’s a good place to raise a family,” he said. “Therefore, they should return next year and in subsequent years.”
Keynote USA
For the Latest Local News, Follow Keynote USA Local on Twitter.