Wisconsin officials find eagles nesting in Kenosha County

With news this week by the Department of Natural Resources that Kenosha County had its first evidence in decades of an active bald eagle nest, Milwaukee and Walworth counties remain the only Wisconsin counties with no confirmed nests in 45 years of state surveys.

Conservation biologist Sharon Fandel used a spotting scope to identify a nesting bald eagle on the edge of a farm field in central Kenosha County.

"It was a quite a find," Fandel said.

She drove to the site on March 28 after getting a report of an eagle from a landowner and found an adult incubating on a nest in a large tree.

The discovery comes after scientists at the DNR last month completed their aerial surveys for the 2017 nesting season. The complete results from the annual survey, which began in 1972, will be released later.

But Fandel said they revealed that Milwaukee, Walworth and Kenosha counties again did not show any evidence of nesting eagles.

That changed last week, when she found an adult eagle in a nest displaying nesting behavior. Why the eagles chose the site "is a bit of a mystery," Fandel said, because it was not near a large body of water.

However, eagles will nest 5 to 8 miles, and sometimes farther, from primary food sites, she said.

RELATED: Eagle numbers continue to soar in Wisconsin

The DNR is not providing the exact location to protect the bird during the nesting season. Bald eagles were removed from Wisconsin's endangered species list in 1997 and from the federal list in 2007. They still are protected by the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act.

Eagles teetered on the brink of extinction in the 1960s and 1970s, but a pesticide ban and protections in state and federal laws help revive their populations.

During the 2016 survey of eagles and osprey, occupied osprey nests were up from 542 in 2014 to 558 in 2016. An osprey survey was not conducted in 2015, according to the DNR, as an experiment to see whether fewer observations — a cost-saving measure — would still provide helpful information on the birds.

Milwaukee County did attract one osprey nest in 2016. Three osprey nests each were found in Waukesha and Washington counties, one each in Ozaukee and Racine counties and none in Kenosha County.