Charles Tischler had no trouble spotting the white-throated caracara and red-tailed hawks wheeling through the sky above Lake Buchanan on Sunday. But those aren’t the birds that Tischler, a 68-year-old retired writer, came to this sprawling manmade lake to see.
Last weekend, he and a team of researchers from Concordia University in Austin boarded a tour boat to count the number of bald eagles that overwinter at the Hill Country lake. The annual survey of the eagle population began 34 years ago, and Tischler has been participating as a volunteer since the beginning. In past years, he has recorded dozens of the birds on these trips, which start on Lake Buchanan’s northeastern shore and end two hours upstream in Colorado Bend State Park. In 1988, Tischler counted 35 bald eagles (seven adults and 28 juveniles). He had another banner year in 1996, when he spotted 22. But in the lead-up to Sunday’s voyage, data pointed to a disturbing trend: On survey days from 2015 to 2019, an average of only four eagles were seen at Lake Buchanan—less than half of the 10.4 recorded in the five-year period before that.
At the end of this year’s trip, the team had tallied only two eagles—the lowest number ever recorded since the survey began. “It was too bad,” Tischler said. “I would have loved to see 12 eagles down there, but it just wasn’t meant to be.” The diminishing numbers could be partially explained by climate change, which has altered eagles’ migratory patterns and increasingly pushed them from southern to northeastern states. But Tischler and others who keep an eye on eagle populations at Lake Buchanan suspect an uptick in illegal duck hunting could be exacerbating the problem.
