At least one wild bald eagle has been confirmed in central Denver’s City Park — raising hopes of natural predators returning to a growing metropolis.

Repeated sightings delighted city parks managers who have been erecting “raptor” poles around eastern Denver to try to lure avian predators to hunt prairie dogs. A lack of predators in urban parks has led to proliferating prairie dogs and geese.

“What the eagles are probably hunting is the geese,” said deputy parks manager Scott Gilmore, a wildlife biologist. “They’ll hunt whatever moves.”

Denver’s 330-acre City Park, about a mile from downtown’s reflective-glass towers, represents a potentially difficult location because noise, people and machinery can disrupt bald eagles.

However, a large male has been documented in the park at least three times since Thanksgiving. It perched atop trees overlooking the park’s largest lake and swooped out over the water, scattering geese.

One day, the eagle flew over fences into the adjacent Denver Zoo.

A quarter-century ago, Colorado leaders tried to reintroduce peregrine falcons downtown, launching five from towers in hopes they would use carefully installed artificial nests. Two crashed into glass. Others fled to mountain foothills. The project was abandoned.

Wide use of pesticides such as DDT in the 1970s reduced bald eagles to fewer than 500 breeding pairs nationwide. But bald eagles were removed from the endangered-species list in 2007 — a milestone in efforts to bring the species back from the brink of extinction. Now there are more than 5,000. Under federal law, it’s illegal to kill them.

The one in City Park is thought to have flown from the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, at the north edge of Denver, where 42 bald eagles nest in cottonwoods around a former chemical- weapons and pesticides plant.

Denver Zoo visitors “were more excited to see the bald eagle than the cape buffalo” when it entered an area near elephants Nov. 29, zoo staffer James Garcia said.

Zoo crews blurted coordinates into their radios. Garcia snapped a photo of the eagle atop a gnarled tree.

“Any time we can see something in the wild,” he said, “it is awesome.”

Over in the park, people gathered when they saw it Dec. 2 and Dec. 6 atop trees over the lake and near East 17th Avenue and Steele Street.

Eagles are visual hunters, locating prey from a perch or while soaring. The lake traditionally has been stocked with fish, part of bald eagles’ diet. Ducks, shorebirds, small mammals and turtles also use the lake.

Bald eagles also are opportunistic feeders — consuming carcasses when they are available — and avian botulism in City Park lakes can be transmitted through carrion.

Arsenal refuge spokeswoman Sherry James said the birds “can fly up to 30 miles away from their roosts to hunt.”

If the City Park bird brings back avian botulism, that could threaten the refuge population. However, she said, there is no evidence of that happening.

“We are watching for it,” James said.

Lisa Sullivan, 53, was feeding cracked corn to an injured goose Dec. 2 when she noticed the bald eagle in a tree.

“So majestic, beautiful. I was thinking somebody is probably going to get eaten. He was hunting,” she said.

The notion that predators naturally return to the middle of a city appeals.

“A balanced ecosystem is a good thing,” she said. “It does seem like there are too many geese.”

Bruce Finley: 303-954-1700, twitter.com/finleybruce or bfinley@denverpost.com