For 10th year, Pittsburgh Hays' bald eagles lay 1st egg while nests more than double in county

The Pittsburgh Hays bald eagles laid their first egg of the season on Friday around 6:30 p.m., which marks their 10th breeding season on a heavily wooded hillside above the Monongahela River.

The pair are the first bald eagles to successfully breed within Pittsburgh’s city limits in more than 150 years, according to local biologists’ estimates.

When the Hays birds first nested in 2013, there was only one other active eagle nest in Allegheny County, in Crescent Township. Bald eagle populations were still classified by the Pennsylvania Game Commission as threatened at that time.

The state’s eagle population rebounded after government protections and intervention. The game commission reintroduced 88 eaglets from Canada in the 1980s.

“Assuming we continue to have clean rivers, and there’s plenty of habitat out there, we will see more bald eagles in our region over time,” said Samara Trusso, who is the wildlife management supervisor for the commission’s Southwest Region.

There are now four more the eagle pairs in Allegheny County, along those in Crescent Township and Hays.

Active bald eagle nests in the county include ones in Harmar, about the Route 28 expressway; West Mifflin, at U.S. Steel Irvin Works; and along the Youghiogheny River near McKeesport, according to Trusso. The nest tree in North Park fell last year but the eagles are still frequenting the park.

PixCams worked with the game commission to install the first livestream of a bald eagle nest in the state at Hays for the 2014 nesting season. They now partner with the Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania to provide the livestream.

“I knew it would be popular,” said Bill Powers, of Murrysville, owner of PixCams. Previously, he had set up a webcam in a bear den in Ely, Minn., to document what Powers said was the first video of a live birth of a bear cub.

“Seeing an eagle nest in Pittsburgh was a huge story,” he said. “I thought this was going to be the next big thing, and it turned out to be that way.”

The webcam has attracted millions of views and is used as an instructional aide in science classes in the region.

Powers doesn’t think there would be the same level of public awareness of the local bald eagles without the live webcam.

“The cam was the mechanism that brought bald eagles into your living room,” he said.

The webcam has captured much of the Hays eagle family’s calamities over the years, including attacks from a raccoon and great horned owls, and losing their nests three times to felled trees.

The couple’s most surprising moment came in 2017 when high winds toppled their nest tree after the female laid the first egg of the breeding season.

The birds rallied, built a new nest within days, and successfully raised one eaglet.

The Hays birds have produced 15 young since they started nesting a decade ago.

They typically rear one to two chicks each year. However, they successfully raised three last year and in 2014.

During the nesting season, several eggs are laid sequentially about two to three days apart. Both parents incubate the eggs continuously for 35 days before they hatch, according to the Audubon Society.