Reported sightings in vicinity of Lake Carnegie have stirred up some feathers
By: David Campbell
Rumored sightings of an American Bald Eagle in the vicinity of Lake Carnegie and the Kingston lock have stirred up some feathers in Princeton.
"It is our national bird, and it had been fairly rare in New Jersey," said Westcott Road resident Patrick Lyons. "When the closest we get to an eagle these days in on a quarter, the fact that one has been sighted in this hugely dense populated area I think is terrific."
Mr. Lyons said he hasn’t sighted the eagle himself, but he said Kingston resident Ed Hewitt, a rower who has trained on Lake Carnegie and who runs a rowing Web site called row2k.com, evidently has.
Mr. Hewitt, who was unavailable for comment Thursday, and a boatload of rowing coaches reportedly sighted the eagle over the lake in early September, and a photo of the bird is posted on the row2k.com Web site.
Similar third-party sightings are being reported by other Princeton residents, as well.
Tom Southerland, a world-class birder who recently announced the closing of his company, Princeton Nature Tours, after more than 21 years of leading nature trips around the globe, said he hasn’t seen the eagle.
But Mr. Southerland reports hearing of several sightings this fall by friends, some who reportedly sighted the eagle while hiking the Delaware & Raritan Canal towpath, another a rower who saw the bird while practicing on the lake.
Another sighting reportedly occurred recently in the vicinity of Rosedale Park in Hopewell Township during the Audubon Society’s annual Christmas bird count.
Ridgeview Road resident Lincoln Hollister, a geology professor at Princeton University, reports five credible sightings of the bird, which include the one reportedly made by Mr. Lyons’ rowing friend, Mr. Hewitt, who reported seeing the eagle stealing fish from ospreys, which he said is typical behavior for American Bald Eagles.
According to Mr. Hollister, who said he has yet to see the bird firsthand, another source is a student of his on the university crew team who said his coaches reportedly saw the eagle.
Another is an e-mail from a friend who forwarded to him an e-mail of someone who saw the bird between where the Millstone River enters Lake Carnegie and the lake’s dam near Kingston.
The other two firsthand sightings, Mr. Hollister said, were reported to him by Regatta Row resident Eunice Wilkinson, whose residence looks out on Lake Carnegie.
But Ms. Wilkinson said she hasn’t seen the eagle herself. She said two friends of hers have one an area resident, the other a Canadian, both of whom are currently out of town, she said.
Mr. Hollister said he has gone looking for eagle nests with his sons. They found no definite nest, but may have found one site that is a candidate for an eagle nesting site, though to protect the bird habitat he wouldn’t divulge locations.
"If there is a nest out there, people will want to go out looking for it," he said.
And while the fact that many of the reported sightings are secondhand, the sheer volume of them is noteworthy. And then there’s the photo taken by Mr. Hewitt.
"That’s enough to convince me these things exist," Mr. Hollister said. "The eagles are indeed coming back in New Jersey. Whether they are just flying around taking fish and enjoying the Millstone-Lake Carnegie area, or whether in fact they have a nest, we have no idea about that."
Bald Eagles have been spotted in New Jersey with some frequency, according to reports on the New Jersey Audubon Society Web site. The birds are on the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s endangered species list for the state, though in 1999 the Clinton Administration proposed delisting the Bald Eagle from the threatened and endangered species list for the lower 48 states.

