Following, photographing the bald eagle

LEWISTOWN, Ill. (AP) -- He saw the world through the eyes of a technology manager at Caterpillar Inc. That world view changed 15 years ago with his purchase of a 35mm camera.

Today, Jim Miller, 70, sees the world in terms of the sometimes catastrophic, sometimes awe-inspiring interface between man and wildlife.

Now in retirement, Miller is a wildlife photographer, traveling up and down the Illinois River, across the country and north to Alaska documenting the life cycle of the American bald eagle.

He tells the remarkable story of this American icon in 20 large format color images that are part of an exhibition at Dickson Mounds Museum. The exhibit includes three taxidermic mounts of eagles and 10 panels describing the life cycle, habits and ecology of eagles.

"The American Bald Eagle" continues at Dickson Mounds through April 1.

Museum director Michael Wiant said Dickson Mounds is expanding beyond the building walls with this and other exhibitions, taking visitors physically and cerebrally into the surrounding environment of Emiquon, an environmental restoration project of The Nature Conservancy.

"Last week at dusk, I left the museum and saw 20 bald eagles standing on the ice at Thompson Lake. In the gallery, you can stand up close nose-to-beak with bald eagles. Then walk out the door and look at a landscape that now approximates a historic landscape," Wiant said.

"Our exhibit complements our understanding of how people lived in this place."

The photographs, mounts and text present insight into the eagles' daily life, reproduction, nurturing, hunting and scavenging habits, but the exhibition also creates nagging questions about how the eagle got to the brink of extinction in the first place.

Wiant said a future project will explore how native people incorporated eagles into their world view.

When European settlers arrived in America, there were one million eagles and 100,000 nesting pairs. With human civilization and the use of DDT, that fell to just 400 nesting pairs of bald eagles by the 1960s. At one time there was a bounty on bald eagles in Alaska because they ate salmon and were considered a threat to the fishing industry.

Banning the use of DDT and placing eagles on the list of endangered and threatened species halted the decline. Today there are 8,000 nesting pairs of bald eagles.

In 1978 there were two documented bald eagle nests in Illinois. Today there are over 150 in the state, said Miller of Dunlap.

In all, Miller has about 2,230 images of eagles telling the tale of this remarkable comeback. That sense of hope is tempered by his current interest documenting another animal in decline: native North American bears -- polar bears, brown bears and black bears.

One goal of the exhibition on eagles is to raise awareness and understanding about the return of American bald eagles to the Illinois River Valley.

Miller said people often stop and question him about what he's doing when he sets up his equipment to photograph eagles. He has discovered that many of these people have never seen bald eagles in the wild.