Retired Ontario police officer Kevin Nelson was looking for red-tailed hawks to photograph. As he swung his camera skyward, what came into focus was much more spectacular.
“When I looked up I saw this bald eagle in a pine tree,” he said.
The magnificent bird, brown-black feathered body, iconic white-plumage head and pointed yellow beak, was perched on a branch next to an industrial warehouse just east of the runway of Ontario International Airport, near the corner of East La Salle Street and South Carnegie Avenue.
“I have been shooting (pictures) of birds in this area for 15 years I’ve never seen anything like that,” said Nelson, 55.
The Pomona Valley Audubon Society has been counting bird species in the fields near the airport for at least four years. Never has a bald eagle been included in the local bird count, said Suzanne Thompson, a long-time member and emeritus professor of psychology at Pomona College in Claremont.
In fact, the empty fields east of Haven Avenue where Nelson came to take bird pictures on New Year’s Eve day contains one of the last remaining nesting areas for the burrowing owl, a bird species of special concern that is disappearing from the region, which Nelson had photographed 10 years ago, he said.
“That is a bald eagle. You can’t argue with that,” said Thompson on Wednesday, Jan. 6, after seeing one of Nelson’s photos.
What is most likely the same bird caught the eye of Isaac Guerrero, 27, of Covina, who was eating his lunch in his car in the parking lot of the warehouse on East La Salle Street. Guerrero saw the bald eagle on the same pine tree on Dec. 22 and again on Jan. 4, he said.
“He was there looking around for five minutes and took off,” Guerrero said. “I thought it was pretty cool.” Each time, he said, the bird flew east.
A bald eagle appearing near the southern border of the burrowing owls site is intriguing, though bald eagles in Southern California are not rare and no longer listed as an endangered species.
Bald eagles usually live near bodies of water. They hunt fish and water fowl, Thompson said. “It is very unusual for an eagle to be there.”
Bald eagles have been found living near Lake Silverwood, Lake Hemet, Lake Perris, Prado Dam, in the mountains of North Orange County and most famously in trees surrounding Big Bear Lake. There, a fixed video camera pointed at a nest for several years gives thousands of people free views of two eagle parents, their eggs, the births and even deaths of eagle chicks. The 12 to 15 bald eagles in the Big Bear area has kept steady, causing authorities to cancel the seasonal bald eagle counts.
In 2016, a pair of bald eagles were spotted nesting in a tree on the edge of the San Gabriel Reservoir in the Angeles National Forest north of Azusa, what experts labeled the first nesting pair of America’s national bird in Los Angeles County.
But never in a field or a warehouse parking lot in Ontario, experts say. So how did one (or is it two?) get there? And where was the raptor headed?
Experts don’t know. These birds were not banded, had no radio collars, so they are free to fly and roam the countryside unfettered, without Big Brother watching.
Kim Boss, wildlife biologist with the San Bernardino National Forest, guessed the eagle seen by Nelson may have been on a long journey from as far away as Oregon or Washington and was simply resting.
Or the eagle could have flown from the nest in Big Bear, perhaps looking for food. They have been known on occasion to eat rodents. While foraging, adult bald eagles can soar 100 miles a day and return to the nest, Boss said.
One banded female bald eagle — code named KO-2 — flew to Oregon and then to the Channel Islands from Lake Hemet, Boss said.
Nelson said he snapped pictures using his Cannon D50 with a 300m lens for a few minutes until the bird left the branch and flew toward the Jurupa Hills.
Perhaps America’s national bird on Dec. 31 was saying goodbye to 2020, a most awful year, signaling better things to come for our nation.
Or it was just stretching its wings — at about 90 inches — the largest wingspan of any raptor.
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