TIPTONVILLE, Tenn. -- For 10-year-old Lucas Fulbright and his pals, the trivia about making the turkey a national symbol was a real knee-slapper.

Along with two busloads of other fourth graders, the boys had just taken part in the annual "eagle tours" at Reelfoot Lake in northwest Tennessee near the Missouri and Kentucky borders.

Reelfoot, a 15,000-acre, shallow lake created by a series of earthquakes nearly 200 years ago, offers one of the few places in the country for observing bald eagles in the wild in the relative comfort.

Visitors ride in buses, climbing down from time to time to check out the eagles through telescopes set up by park rangers.

Along the way, rangers keep up a steady chatter of eagle facts, including mention that Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey, not the bald eagle, as the national symbol.

Had that had happened, the guide says, Neil Armstrong would have called back from the moon saying, "Houston, the turkey has landed."

"That wouldn't sound too good," Lucas said as he and his friends from the nearby town of Troy laughed at the thought.

Majestic birds in flight

The eagle tours run from January through March and attract more than 5,000 visitors a year to Reelfoot Lake State Park.

Twenty other species of birds of prey, including hawks, owls and falcons, make Reelfoot their home, and more than 300,000 ducks, geese and other migratory water birds come to the lake for the winter.

But it's the eagles that draw the crowds. Visitors can watch the majestic birds in flight as well as perched in huge, ancient cypress trees, scanning the lake for fish.

The eagles with white heads are at least four or five years old.

Younger birds are brown.

"The younger ones are more active because they're still learning how to hunt. The older ones catch something to eat and go home," said David Haggard, the park's chief ranger.

Sitting beside the Mississippi River, Reelfoot Lake is the year-round home for eight pairs of nesting eagles and about 30 of their offspring.

About 200 other eagles migrate south for the for the easy pickings of fish, ducks and other prey at Reelfoot, but they don't build nests. They return home to the northern United States and Canada when winter is over.

The eagle nests that are built are about 6 feet long and 5 feet deep, and made of sticks and brush. The resident birds use them year after year.

"You could get in there and lie down. It takes a lot of room for the babies to be in there learning to fly, flapping their wings," Haggard said. "The largest nest here on the lake has been used every year since 1989. It's now about 12 long and 8 feet wide."

Eagles stand 2 to 3 feet tall, weigh up to 15 pounds and have wing spans of 6 to 8 feet. They can live 40 years in the wild.

Making a comeback

In the 1960s, eagles were disappearing throughout North America, primarily because of habitat destruction and pollution from agricultural pesticides.

But after the banning of DDT and other efforts to protect the birds, the eagles began to make a comeback. Now, they can be found in every state in the continental United States.

The Reelfoot park has been running its eagle tours since the mid-1970s, and the rangers know the location of each nest at the lake.

Visitors can tour Reelfoot on their own and hardy eagle watchers can venture to the less accessible parts of the lake by boat and foot, but the bus tours, at $4 a person, offer a quick, easy alternative to a wet, cold hike.

"We come here about this time every year. The eagles are fascinating, and my husband always enjoyed them," says Bethel Williams, 84, of the First Baptist Church of Paris, Tenn.

She and two dozen other members of a church club called "Living Longer and Liking It" joined an eagle tour caravan of four buses, with two loads of school children and a church group from Memphis.

Haggard drove the bus carrying Williams' group. At one stop, atop a Mississippi River levee, he pointed out a female eagle on a nest just a few hundred feet away at the top of a tall cypress tree.

A male eagle, probably the nesting bird's mate, soared high overhead and out over the river looking for food for his growing family.

Eagles mate for life and a female generally lays one to three eggs a year.

"She's sitting down in the nest so you can assume she's laid an egg," Haggard said. "When they hatch, the young birds stay in the nest about 14 weeks until they're big enough to fly. When they fly out of the nest, they're fully grown."

The children and the senior citizens filed out of the bus for a better look.

"I saw her head," Lucas said after peering through a telescope. "That was cool."