The Raptor Returns, Dated by First Nests

Bald eagle, osprey, peregrine — Indiana's restorations reaching this county

Lead: Chapman, 1880, is again the “before”: the golden eagle “now no longer seen here,” the bald eagle “once quite common, now scarce,” most raptors “disappeared.” The returns below are dated the way the record dates them — by first nests — and each bird's geography is kept honest: the eagle's county firsts are real county firsts; the osprey's stronghold is the county's state park; the peregrine is South Bend's, printed as a boundary line only.

Bald eagle. State arc: eagles nested in Indiana until the 1890s (last nest found 1897), none were known to nest from about 1900 to 1988, and DNR reintroduced the species 1985–1989, raising and releasing 73 eaglets from Wisconsin and Alaska at Monroe Lake; first successful nesting followed in 1991. The species was federally delisted in 2007, moved to state special-concern in 2008 at 50 nesting pairs, and removed from Indiana's endangered and special-concern lists in 2020, when DNR estimated about 300 nesting pairs across 84 counties. County arc, and it verifies the floor this section was given: 2015 is the hinge year twice over. At Potato Creek State Park, North Liberty, a pair that had nested unsuccessfully since about 2012 — at first by improving an osprey nest — hatched three eaglets in spring 2015, the park's first in its 38-year history (DNR release, May 8, 2015). At St. Patrick's County Park, a pair took over a red-tailed hawk nest in late 2014–2015 and hatched an eaglet that June. Notre Dame's ND-LEEF record states the conclusion plainly: the ND-LEEF and Potato Creek eagles “were the first successful bald eagle nests ever recorded in St. Joseph County” — with the St. Patrick's nest still active a decade later, its cam reporting 16 eaglets produced through 2025–26 in the South Bend Tribune's account. Neither site is in Olive Township; the township's eagle share is that its county's first nests are dated, documented, and twenty miles or less away, and that eBird's Spicer Lake hotspot now lists Bald Eagle among the preserve's recorded birds.

Osprey. State arc: nesting noted in only four Indiana counties from 1930 to 1975; listed state-endangered in 1984; restored in part by hacking 96 young ospreys from Chesapeake Bay nests at four Indiana sites in 2003–2006, with nesting platforms; down-listed to special concern in 2018 after three-plus years above 50 nest territories, with over 100 nests in 2020 (126 active nests reported). County arc: DNR's own distribution note clusters the breeding osprey in, among a short list, “Kosciusko, St. Joseph, and LaPorte counties,” and Potato Creek held four nesting pairs in 2015 — “the highest concentration of any area in Indiana” in DNR's release that year — with further nests at St. Patrick's County Park and near Saint Mary's College. The county frame is the township's frame here: Potato Creek, in Liberty Township, is the next township south, and its osprey concentration is the strongest raptor fact adjacent to this ground in the published record.

Peregrine falcon — boundary line only. South Bend's downtown towers are not this ground and get two sentences, no more: Indiana released 60 young peregrines in Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, South Bend and Evansville in 1991–1994, and the South Bend City-County Building nest (following the Tower Building) is a long-running DNR-monitored site, credited in the 2025 state nesting report with 63 chicks fledged across 2003–2025. The bird belongs to the South Bend build; it is named here so the county raptor set is complete and its boundary is explicit.

Sources:

1. Chapman (1880), p. 342 — golden eagle gone, bald eagle scarce.
2. Indiana DNR (Dec. 14, 2020), “Successful recovery of bald eagle marks big win for conservation” — 1985–89 reintroduction, 73 eaglets, first nesting 1991, no nesting c. 1900–1988, c. 300 pairs in 2020, delisting.
3. Indiana DNR (May 8, 2015), “Eagles hatch for first time at Potato Creek SP” — three eaglets, 2015; osprey history at the park; four osprey pairs, state's highest concentration.
4. University of Notre Dame, Environmental Change Initiative / ND-LEEF (2015–2018) — St. Patrick's County Park eaglet, June 2015; ND-LEEF and Potato Creek “first successful bald eagle nests ever recorded in St. Joseph County.”
5. Indiana DNR, Osprey (in.gov) — 1930–75 four-county nesting; 96 hacked 2003–06; special concern 2018; 126 nests 2020; DNR (2010) breeding concentration incl. St. Joseph and LaPorte counties.
6. Indiana DNR, Peregrine Falcon (in.gov) and Indiana Peregrine Falcon Nesting Report 2025 (Midwest Peregrine Society) — releases 1991–94 incl. South Bend; City-County Building 2003–2025, 63 fledged.