Walking across the Croton Dam with my dog Ella last week, I came upon a man hunched over a serious-looking, tripod-mounted telescope, his own dog pressed against his legs in the chill air. The scope was trained on the distant shore of the Croton Reservoir, a good half-mile away across open water. Glancing over his shoulder as we approached, he said, “You want to see a bald eagle?”

It wasn’t easy at first. With an 80X power telescope held steady by the tripod it’s your head that has to become motionless enough to focus on an object that far away. But a bright white head stood out from the gray-brown mass of bare winter branches, and there it was. “I’m pretty sure that’s the male,” the man said. “The females have the same white head and tail, but they’re larger, a third again as big.”

“I knew there were some eagles over-wintering here,” I said, “but I thought they had all left for Canada by now.”

Bob Breen has been watching eagles on the reservoir for two years – since he retired as police chief of the nearby town of New Castle. A few weeks ago he counted 16 bald eagles on the ice of the frozen reservoir, the most he has ever seen at one time here. Most of them have since headed north on their spring migration, but this pair has been nesting at the reservoir for three or four years. Agents for the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), which monitors the birds, has concluded that their nest has eggs in it.

We are seeing the fruits of a state-sponsored program to restore bald eagles to their old habitats in New York. When the program began in 1976, the entire state had just one pair of nesting bald eagles, but they failed to produce any offspring. By 2009, that number had increased to 173 nesting pairs.

In 1997, the first bald eagle was born along the Hudson River in more than 100 years. And by last year, 20 breeding pairs were nested along the Hudson, producing 32 fledgling eagles.

The total DEC count of bald eagles over-wintering in New York statewide for last year was 401 – 241 adults and 160 juveniles. (Bald eagles reach sexual maturity at five years of age, when their head and tail feathers turn white.) The final statewide tally for this year has not yet been released, but preliminary results suggest that the number will be an all-time high, surpassing the previous record of 573 set in 2008.

“Let me see if I can spot the female in the nest,” Bob said. The nest was not hard to find. Eagles mate for life – which can be more than 30 years – and they tend to use the same nest, adding to it year after year. Built high in the branches of a white pine by the water, it can be as much as six feet across, eight feet deep and weigh hundreds of pounds.

“There she is, her head just popped up!” Bob yielded his place at the scope and, sure enough, I could see the magnificent head of the female just above the rim of the huge nest. It made my day.

Croton-on-Hudson is a prime area for viewing bald eagles in winter. Morning commuters often spot them from the train as it crosses the mouth of the Croton River where the river empties into the Hudson. Some of those birds make daily flights a few miles up the Croton River to the dam. Other local vantage points include George’s Island Park in Montrose; the Verplanck waterfront; Riverfront Park and Charles Point/China Pier, both in Peekskill; and the Route 6/202 overlook above Iona State Park, one of the great scenic lookouts of the Lower Hudson Valley at any time of year.

For more information on bald eagles in our area, go to the Web sites of The DEC and The Eagle Institute.

Photo sources: http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkadog/3683073458, http://www.flickr.com/photos/dobak/86751957, http://www.flickr.com/photos/alanvernon/3228433079.

Posted By: Bruce Dollar

Political science, in one view, studies the clash of competing legitimate interests, sometimes boiled down to the classic question, “Whose ox gets gored?” Such a dispute among neighbors is unfolding in Croton-on-Hudson, as a beloved cooperative community nursery school tries to reap the benefit of a benefactor’s gift and runs into opposition in the community, including from some parents and alumni of the school.

The confrontation concerns the fate of ten acres of pristine wooded land along North Highland Ave., in the heart of the village. There are purists on both sides, of course: hard-core defenders of nature vs. hard-line defenders of property rights. But complicated circumstances make it not so easy to choose sides.

Fifty years ago, a philanthropist named Samuel Rubin donated the land to the Croton Community Nursery School. CCNS has deep roots in the local culture, having nurtured generations of Croton preschoolers (including my wife). At least two distinguished architects, reportedly including the great Marcel Breuer, as well as Ricardo Scofidio, produced designs for a new school building for the site but, CCNS always being something of a shoestring operation, nothing was ever built.

Fast forward to the beginning of the 21st Century, (a few years ago). Croton was in the midst of a development boom in real estate. Ravenous buyers were fighting over houses for sale and, for the first time in Croton history, paying seven figures for great big ones. Vacant land was scarce, and lots once considered too steep or too wet to be built on were getting a second look.

This was the atmosphere that may have prompted CCNS to reconsider its big, slumbering asset: ten acres of vacant land, from which it was getting no benefit. What kind of sense did that make when the school was living hand to mouth? Its board of directors voted to sell the land and, a year later, asked a local builder to draw up plans to subdivide roughly half the property into building lots.

Then there’s the other side to the story. The property is virtually a gorge with a water course running at the bottom of it. There is a narrow strip along North Highland Ave. (where the school would have been built) that’s relatively level, but then it becomes a series of steep inclines with rock outcroppings and big old-growth trees. It’s not hard to see why it was never considered desirable for development. Building anywhere but along North Highland would require variances to local code restrictions affecting wetlands and steep slopes.

Plans were drawn up dividing half of CCNS’s land into four lots, each to accommodate a new house. The other half, about 5 acres, would be preserved in its natural state and donated to the village. The plans were submitted to the village Planning Board, which would have to approve any exceptions to the building codes. Soon word got out and opposition began to form, their reasons articulated at a well-attended public hearing of the Planning Board.

Environmental damage and its consequences were at the core of the opposition. The property is one of the last remaining substantial untouched green spaces in the Village. Not only would 200-year-old trees be destroyed – at least 100 trees were slated to come down in the development plan – but also clearing the land would create runoff into the gorge that, after heavy rainfall, could cause flooding in the houses downstream. (A single mature oak tree consumes 50 gallons of water a day.) Other objections included concerns that chemicals from lawn treatment would wash into the gorge, that increased car traffic would make the narrow street less safe, and that the unspoiled beauty of the woods would be ruined for hikers and neighbors.

Is a compromise possible? Many opponents of the plan seem ready to accept two or even three houses, if they can be sited without penetrating too close to the wetlands and steep slopes. And few opponents seem bent on preventing CCNS from deriving some benefit from their land. But so far, the school has not modified its position that the Planning Board should approve all four projected building lots.

Stay tuned. In the meantime, information including photos and copies of the subdivision plan can be seen online by going to facebook.com and searching for “Save North Highland Woods.”

Posted By: Bruce Dollar