This past December, 探花精选’s Cape Charles Christmas Bird Count made a surprising discovery while conducting its annual survey on a local Virginia Barrier Island: a Bald Eagle nest built directly on the beach. The group, led by ornithologist Dan Cristol, found the stick-supported structure propped up on a piece of driftwood, complete with a soft, grassy bed and picked-clean fishbones. "It was sitting right in the middle of the beach," Cristol recalls of the "enormous" nest. No eagles were around at the time, so the crew snapped a few pictures and continued on to not disturb the homeowners. Then, in March, another Bald Eagle beach nest was discovered on a different island. The two new nests bring the total number of beach nests found on the Virginia Barrier Islands up to five since the first two were discovered in 2013 and another in 2018. “I was surprised to see these two nests pop up so quickly at those two sites,” says Alex Wilke, an ornithologist for The Nature...