The bald eagle's return: the county's first nests, 2015

1880 to the present

The going, and the long absence: Chapman gives the bald eagle one measured line in 1880: "once quite common, now scarce," with well-preserved specimens in the county — the bird already passing from neighbor to museum piece. The national story underneath is the known one of shooting, habitat loss, and DDT; Indiana's answer was a reintroduction in the 1980s, releasing young eagles at southern Indiana sites, from which the state's nesting population slowly rebuilt northward. For St. Joseph County the return has a precise, documented shape: eagles reappeared over the river as visitors first — a Notre Dame Magazine essayist remembers the first one he saw flying over South Bend while coaching baseball at a river ballpark on the city's northern edge — and then, in the second decade of the new century, as nesters.

The first successful nests ever recorded in the county: The University of Notre Dame's statement of the event is this section's governing sentence: "The eagles at ND-LEEF, as well as a pair from Potato Creek State Park, were the first successful bald eagle nests ever recorded in St. Joseph County." Both came to young in the same spring. At Potato Creek State Park, at North Liberty, persistence is the documented word — the Indiana DNR's release of 8 May 2015 tells the pair's four-year courtship of the park: in 2012 and 2013 the eagles took over an osprey nest, added sticks, and were observed mating, but left when the ospreys returned and raised nothing; in 2014 they built their own nest in the park's southwest corner and again produced no young; and in the spring of 2015, in a remote area of the park, they hatched three eaglets — the first eagles ever produced at Potato Creek, watchable, the DNR advised, over Worster Lake from the fishing pier by the Porter Rea Cemetery and the East Boat Launch.

At St. Patrick's County Park, on the river north of the city, a second pair took over a red-tailed hawk's nest inside the university's Linked Experimental Ecosystem Facility (ND-LEEF) — the county parks director, Evie Kirkwood, had noticed them building in the autumn of 2014 — and on 22 May 2015 she watched an eaglet's head emerge above the nest rim. The ND-LEEF pair has returned to that nest year after year since, under an eagle cam installed in 2017; two eaglets hatched there on 2 April 2018, and by the spring of 2026 the nest had produced sixteen eaglets in eleven years on the facility's count, carried in the Tribune's current-season reporting. The bird Chapman filed as scarce in 1880 now raises young inside two of the county's public parks, on camera.

Sources:

1. Chapman, History of St. Joseph County (1880), Chapter II, pp. 340–343.
2. Indiana Department of Natural Resources release, "Eagles hatch for first time at Potato Creek SP," 8 May 2015 (events.in.gov) — the 2012–2015 nest sequence; three eaglets; viewing points.
3. University of Notre Dame, Environmental Change Initiative and ND News (2015–2018) — the ND-LEEF pair; "first successful bald eagle nests ever recorded in St. Joseph County"; the 2 April 2018 hatch; the former red-tailed hawk nest claimed in 2015.
4. Joseph Dits, "Eaglet hatches at St. Patrick's County Park," South Bend Tribune, 4 June 2015; and the Tribune's ND-LEEF nest reporting, March 2026 — sixteen eaglets in eleven years.
5. Notre Dame Magazine, "They Fly Home" — the first eagle seen over the city, from a river ballpark.