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2015, the county's eagle year · falcons from 2003 · Run B #222
Chapman leaves the bald eagle "once quite common, now scarce," the golden eagle gone, and the turkey buzzard almost disappeared — and the returns, when they come, are dated by nests: Bald eagle. Indiana's eagles were reintroduced statewide in the 1980s, but St. Joseph County's nesting record begins, whole and dated, in this decade: at Potato Creek State Park, southwest of this township in the same county, a pair worked an osprey nest in 2012 and 2013 and was observed mating, built its own nest in the park's southwest corner in 2014 without producing young, and in spring 2015 — the fourth consecutive nesting year — hatched three eaglets, the first ever produced in that park. The same spring, at St. Patrick's County Park on South Bend's north side, a pair that had taken over a red-tailed hawk's nest at the University of Notre Dame's Linked Experimental Ecosystem Facility (ND-LEEF) fledged one eaglet, the first witnessed eagle nesting in the county parks. Notre Dame's statement of the pair of events is the county's verdict: the ND-LEEF eagles, "as well as a pair from Potato Creek State Park, were the first successful bald eagle nests ever recorded in St. Joseph County." A live nest camera followed at ND-LEEF in February 2016; the St. Patrick's nest partially collapsed in June 2022 with the birds safe, and by the Tribune's 2026 account the nest had produced 16 eaglets in its 11 years. The eagle's local geography is county geography — Potato Creek and St. Patrick's both stand west of Penn Township — and no eagle nest seated in the township stands in the record reached; the return is printed at the county size the nest record itself keeps. (The Baugo watershed plan of 2004 already lists the bald eagle, then federally threatened, among the watershed's species of concern — the bird was on this ground's paperwork eleven years before it was on the county's nest record, printed at item 6.) Osprey. The same Potato Creek release carries the osprey superlative: in 2015 the park again held four nesting pairs of ospreys, "the highest concentration of any area in Indiana" — the county's densest nesting ground of the audit's form is Potato Creek's, on the DNR's own 2015 statement. A 2009 Tribune account counts three osprey pairs at Potato Creek and a pair along the St. Joseph River behind Saint Mary's College, with a young pair nest-building at South Bend Country Club not yet counted as breeding.
Peregrine falcon. The downtown falcons are South Bend's, at boundary size: Indiana's peregrine introduction project released sixty young falcons at Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, South Bend and Evansville between 1991 and 1994, and the Tower Building in downtown South Bend became a nest site — first nesting attempted in 2003, on the Midwest Peregrine Society's site ledger, with nesting recorded for the 21st year in 2024, 59 young produced in total at the site, the 2024 pair an unbanded female with male M/52 "Flash," a 2019 Fort Wayne fledge, five eggs laid and two hatched. The Tribune's falcon record names the pair of the 2000s — Guinevere and Zephyr, on the Tower Building's nesting box from the 1990s placement — and the birds' later move to the County-City Building, watched by the South Bend falcon community for over a decade by the camera era. No peregrine nest stands in Osceola or Penn Township in the record reached; the falcons are the county seat's tower birds, printed here because this section's raptor roll is a county roll and their absence from this ground is part of its shape. Chapman's golden eagle, "always rare but now no longer seen here," has no return record at all, and none is printed.
Sources: Chapman (1880), p. 342 (Birds of Prey), read first-hand. Eagle: Indiana DNR news release, 8 May 2015, "Eagles hatch for first time at Potato Creek SP" (nesting attempts 2012–2014; three eaglets 2015; four osprey pairs, "the highest concentration of any area in Indiana"); University of Notre Dame, Environmental Change Initiative / ND-LEEF releases, 4 June 2015, 22 Feb. 2016, 31 May 2017 and 2 Apr. 2018 (St. Patrick's hawk-nest takeover 2015; "the first successful bald eagle nests ever recorded in St. Joseph County"; eagle cam); South Bend Tribune, June 2022 (nest partial collapse) and March 2026 (16 eaglets in 11 years). Osprey 2009: Tribune account as carried in the Michiana Business Research Library newspaper record (three pairs Potato Creek; pair behind Saint Mary's College; South Bend Country Club builders). Peregrine: Indiana DNR, Peregrine Falcon page (introduction project 1991–1994, sixty young at four cities including South Bend; nests in urban areas including South Bend); Midwest Peregrine Society, 2024 Midwest Peregrine Season Narrative (Tower Building, South Bend: first nesting attempted 2003; 21st year 2024; 59 young total; 2024 pair and outcome); Tribune falcon coverage 2002–2006 as carried in the newspaper record (Tower Building nest box; Guinevere and Zephyr). Boundary flags: no eagle, osprey, or falcon nest seated in Penn Township is claimed; all nest sites named stand elsewhere in St. Joseph County.