On this Independence Day, America’s national symbol is alive and well in Iowa. The results just in from the winter count of bald eagles show the big birds continue to thrive in the Hawkeye State.Bruce Ehresman is a wildlife diversity technician at the D-N-R wildlife research station in Boone. He says about 17-hundred eagles were spotted by state officials during the most recent count across Iowa. He says the count total was actually down slightly from last year, but that’s not a concern. He blames the mild winter for keeping the eagles from migrating into Iowa as they didn’t need to move to find open water.Ehresman says the goal in the 1980s had been to have ten bald eagle nests in Iowa by the year 2000. In 1990, there were eight nests. Now, there are more than one hundred nests in 50 counties.There were fewer than 400 eagles in Iowa in 1983.