America’s national bird, the bald eagle, has made a comeback, and a local conservationist says the upturn is being observed in Warren County.

The Audubon Society of Mississippi tracks three bald eagle nests here.

&#8220In this general area, we appear to be seeing more eagles and having more eagle nests reported,” said Bruce Reid, executive director of the National Audubon Society’s Lower Mississippi Program office, located in downtown Vicksburg.

Once teetering on the edge of extinction, the bald eagle population has grown from a 1963 count of 417 mating pairs in the lower 48 states to a tally of nearly 10,000 breeding pairs, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The species, first declared in jeopardy in 1967, has been taken off the national list of endangered and threatened species.

One of the local nests is home to a pair of eagles spotted near Eagle Lake for decades, the first nesting pair observed in Warren County after bald eagles were listed as endangered, said Reid.

The two others are on Davis Island and in Redwood.

The Audubon Society tracks between 40 and 50 active eagle nests in Mississippi, Reid said. Volunteer observers keep tabs on the birds and give the Audubon Society updates on their activities.

Nelson Ball of Natchitoches, La., visits the nest on Davis Island, spotted five years ago, once every few weeks between January and July, when the eagles nest and raise their young.

He visits private land there to hunt, fish and take photos, but also makes the trip to the nest, which overlooks an island lake from 100 feet up a cypress tree.

The eagles fish for carp, bass and white perch and hunt &#8220an ample supply of small mammals” on the 28,000-acre island, Ball said.

He and observers of Warren County’s other nests give the Audubon Society and the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science in Jackson information on when the birds return to their nests, lay their eggs, and when the young hatch and mature.

&#8220It’s an absolute honor to be able to observe such a magnificent creature in the wild,” Ball said.

In the winter of 1998, Wade Creekmore was pleased in the to discover that a pair of eagles had built a nest in a sycamore tree near his cabin about a mile from Eagle Lake.

&#8220Those eagles had a nest on the other side of the levy,” he said. &#8220For years, I saw people parked out there with telescopes.”

Creekmore has watched the eagles produce a family each year since, but says the sycamore died this year and will topple soon.

Creekmore said that when the dead sycamore falls he hopes the eagles will remain his neighbors.

&#8220I hope they’ll pick a tree on my property so I can continue to watch them,” he said.

The pair seldom hunts together, and when one returns, &#8220they do a lot of chirping, and it’s obvious that they’re glad to see each other,” he said.

Creekmore has led bird watching groups there from nearby Tara Wildlife, a 17,200-acre preserve and conference center. Also, his three daughters and nine grandchildren have all been to the nest.

Creekmore contacts Nick Winstead, an ornithologist with the Mississippi Museum of Natural History, every few weeks during the months when the pair is nesting.

&#8220We’ve been depending on volunteers across the state to report these nests as they see them,” Winstead said.

Reid said the bald eagle is one of several species of birds making a return in Mississippi, along with the osprey and the brown pelican.

Warren County could have more than three nests, he said, since eagles prefer remote areas and the Audubon gets most of its information from volunteer observers.

His office sometimes gets reports of eagle nests that turn out to belong to hawks or osprey.

Though no longer endangered, bald eagles remain protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act.

The Continental Congress put the bird onto the country’s official seal in 1782.

Reed attributes the eagle’s comeback to protection efforts and the 1972 bann of DDT, a pesticide shown to poison water sources where the eagles fished.

&#8220We’re encouraged,” he said. &#8220Obviously, the bird is one that evokes a lot of excitement and interest.”