Back when I was a youngster, seeing our nation’s symbol, the bald eagle, in Pennsylvania was about as likely as seeing a polar bear. My how things have changed.

According to the Pennsylvania Game Commission, eagles are nesting in 49 Pennsylvania counties. There’s even a new bald eagle nest viewing platform on State Game Land 180 in Pike County, to give people an even better opportunity to view nesting birds.

The PGC says that there are currently 170 known nests, including 36 new nests, statewide. Also, in the latest eagle survey, Clinton and Mifflin counties were added to the list of counties with nesting bald eagles.

Since 1983 the nests have produced 1,200 eaglets throughout the state and the population is said to be increasing by about 15 percent per year. While that may be good news, there are some reports of “crowding” in some areas of the state.The commission has been hearing of some eagle conflicts at or near nests with “rogue” eagles interfering with an established pair. Many times the invaders are driven off but there have been cases of intruders interfering with nesting and even causing nesting failures. This has been happening mostly in northwestern Pennsylvania and in the Upper Delaware River Watershed. These areas are said to be reaching the saturation point as far as eaglens are concerned.

PGC biologists were astounded at one nesting site in Northampton county this year when they found four eaglets in one nest. Apparently, this is extremely rare as eagles normally lay one to three eggs.

I’ve seen eagles along the Susquehanna River and I have two buddies who swear they’ve seen mature golden eagles here in Pennsylvania. If it were anyone else I would probably have thought that what they’d seen were immature bald eagles, but these two guys are inveterate bird watchers and they know their birds. If they say they saw golden eagles, I believe them.

We’re seeing more birds around our yard this year than we have in the 21 years we’ve lived at our current location. We’ve made a real effort to entice songbirds this year and it seems to be working. We see more blue jays and cardinals than anything, but there are others also.

DOES IT WORK? Once in a while I find a product that really works well enough that I’d like to share it with my readers. One such product is the Hot Water on Demand unit from Coleman. It’s basically an on-demand hot water heater for campers who’d like some hot water for dishes, etc. The unit uses a rechargeable battery and one of the small propane cylinders and it really does work.

We have been using one at our cabin for a couple years now and it certainly has made doing dishes, etc., more handy. We used to heat water on our stove whenever we needed to do dishes, which made the cabin hot and steamy and took long enough so that we’d put off doing our dishes until after dinner in the evening. Now we do them as we use them making it a much easier chore. We have a 15-gallon water jug that we use as a water supply, but there is a five-gallon plastic container that comes with the unit that you can also use.

The unit is marked “for outdoor use only” but I figured that since we have gas heat, gas lights, gas cooking and gas refrigeration we were probably not risking our lives adding one more gas appliance. There’s even a spray attachment you can order if you want to use the unit for a quick shower. Not that anybody ever showers at the hunting camp.

-- E-mail comments to jdsteese@yahoo.com.