Hopefully the last technical update: Some of our loyal cam watchers might have noticed that our website went down on Saturday night and briefly on Sunday. The hard drive on our new web server crashed, so they had to replace it. We’re now on a new server with a different hard drive, so we expect things to be better. But I can say the technical gremlins are really working us overtime this year. :-)

If you sent an email to our website during the downtime (Saturday night or Sunday), we might not have received it, so feel free to send it again. This would be the webmaster address (from the Contact form), not the blackwatercam address.

Blackwater YouTube Channel

We’re excited to announce that the Friends of Blackwater have just set up a YouTube video channel featuring videos from our 2008 Eagle Cam. The first four videos (Nesting 1 and 2, and Incubating 1 and 2) that you see on our new channel are videos that I have already posted here in my web log. But I have now added two new videos on the YouTube site (Incubating 3 and Incubating 4), which offer some funny footage of our parents putting sticks and grass on each other.

In the future, I will continue to post videos here in our web log, but I might also post extra videos on the YouTube site. Anytime I post new YouTube videos, I’ll mention it here. And remember that our YouTube channel will always have the complete collection of our videos for the season.

Although the videos on YouTube are compressed more than the videos we post here, it’s free for us to post videos on YouTube, so it’s a handy place for us to share our videos — especially the ones that are posted more for fun than education.

If you have a YouTube account, don’t forget that you can subscribe to our channel, as well as rate our videos and offer comments. And we’d appreciate you sharing the link with your family and friends.

Also, if you’re the kind of person who enjoys saving the videos you see on YouTube, you can use the free KeepVid service to download YouTube videos to your hard drive.

Blackwater Eagles

We had some excitement at our nest on Sunday afternoon. The mother eagle appeared to be highly agitated when a second bird (not likely the father) appeared in the left section of our cam image. This appeared to be an intruder of some sort, and our parent warned it off. We’ll be keeping an eye on the cam to see if the intruder returns, but so far the nest has been quiet.

I also wanted to point out that our father eagle brought in a large fish for the mother eagle on Monday. In past seasons, our father eagle has been very generous with food — often showering the mother eagle with fish and ducks when an egg or chick made an appearance, but this year our male is not doing too much of that, and we’ve wondered a few times if it’s the same male as the previous years.

I asked our ranger if there has been a drop in the fish supply because of our drought, but he reports that our fisheries expert is saying that the fish supply looks normal.

At this point it’s not such a big deal that the father is making mom go “shopping,” but we hope he picks up the pace once the chicks arrive. As a reminder, we’re looking for hatching around March 1 and then again around March 5.

What Will Hatching Look Like

In the past, we have had eggs hatch in the morning and also the late afternoon, so we’re not sure when it will take place for each of the eggs. For those who are new to our cam, here is a series of shots showing the first egg hatching in our 2004-2005 season. The camera was closer to the nest that year, so it’s easier to see the first small hole in the egg. (Just an FYI: We moved the camera higher the next season so it would be easier to see the eaglets as they grew bigger and started moving around).

When the eaglet is ready to hatch, it will turn itself inside the egg and pierce the egg’s air sac, then it will take its first breath of air from within the shell. Next the chick will use its neck muscles and egg tooth to pip or punch a small hole in the shell. The eaglet will continue to slowly turn and peck until it has cut a hole around the diameter of the shell so that it can push out the bottom half and free itself. This process is very tiring for the chick and can take 24 hours to complete since the young bird will frequently stop to rest. Once the eaglet is out, it will be wet and tired with its eyes closed, but it won’t be long before it dries off and is soon able to see and sit up.

Here you can see a photo of our first eaglet in the 2004-2005 season sitting up for the mother eagle and looking for food, even as its sibling is hatching right beside it.

As for our parents, they will hear the chick chirping and feel it moving inside the shell, so if the incubating parent is frequently moving off the eggs or is looking down at the eggs a lot, that would indicate that they feel or hear something. Biologists believe that eagle parents do not normally assist the eaglet during the hatching process even if the chick is having trouble breaking free.

Once the eaglet arrives, it will not have to be fed right away because before it hatches, it absorbs the yolk and uses that for early nourishment. So if we don’t see the parents feeding the eaglet right away, that doesn’t mean that the eaglet is hungry or being deprived of food. We will be watching though to see if our male eagle picks up the pace on his food deliveries once the chicks arrive.

Other Eagle Cams

Channel Island Egg:

In my last post, I provided a list of other eagle cams around the country, but I forgot to mention the cams in the Channel Islands in California. As it so happens, the Santa Cruz Eagle Cam just saw an egg laid on Sunday, so be sure to check out their cam.

Florida Audubon Eagle Cam:

Also, we’re hearing that the eaglets on the Florida Audubon Eagle Cam will be banded soon (possibly this week), and one will be outfitted with a satellite transmitter. These eaglets are getting very big and it should be interesting if cam watchers can see them banded and tagged. Once these eaglets leave the nest and begin migrating north for the summer, we will be able to follow the one with the transmitter. Often young Florida eagles come up to the Chesapeake Bay, so this eaglet might end up spending part of its summer near us.

Norfolk Eagle Cam:

As I mentioned on our cam page a couple days ago, Norfolk is now reporting that the old resident female has been seen with the old resident male — without the intruder female. This nest is turning into quite a soap opera, so I’m going to stop reporting on every event and just let our cam watchers follow the action for themselves from the Norfolk Eagle Cam page. Right now no one knows what will come of this season in Norfolk as it’s turning into a very unusual year, but if they’re lucky, maybe two of the birds will finally settle down and produce a healthy clutch. Naturally, I think most eagle fans are pulling for the original couple. :-)

Until next time,
Lisa - webmaster
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Tags:
eagles, wildlife refuge, eagle cam, eagle eggs, eagle video, Blackwater Refuge, Maryland

 

Weather and Cam

I wanted to thank everyone for their patience as we were troubleshooting our image problem. Something with our satellite dish service suddenly changed, and we were struggling to alter our software so it could accommodate the new setup. We’ll keep an eye on it, but we hope the problem is solved.

Also, we’ve had our website moved to a new web server that should be able to handle our increase in traffic once the hatching starts, so hopefully this preemptive move will head off any technical trouble once we start seeing eaglets around March 1.

One final cam note, we’re expecting some messy weather (rain and snow) starting possibly tonight. The snow might accumulate a couple inches, but the weather should be better by Saturday. So far our parents have done a very good job of keeping the eggs dry, so they should be able to handle it, although you might see them looking pretty ragged in the rain and snow.

Norfolk Eagle Pair

I want to thank all those who kept me up-to-date on the drama at the Norfolk Eagle Cam website. I had been out of town over the weekend and missed some of the events.

Apparently there was a lot of confusion — even by the biologists — about what had been happening, but from what they now gather a young intruder female managed to drive the resident female away, and now the resident male seems to be bonding with the new female. This development led to the abandonment of the eggs, so the biologists received permission to go up and retrieve the eggs for study, which they did the other day. Now the new couple has been seen hanging out at the new nest, and it is hoped that they will lay their own clutch.

WVEC.com has posted photos of the eagle eggs that were taken from the nest. Be sure to check out these shots as they offer a rare opportunity to see bald eagle eggs up close.

Ken Scheibech, who is one of our cam watchers, was kind enough to tape the footage showing the biologists going up to retrieve the eggs. I should point out that the Norfolk Eagle Cam website had been reporting that the couple had three eggs, but the biologists found only two and no broken egg shells (possibly meaning there was never a third). I’ve taken the liberty of editing Ken’s movie down to a web-friendly size. Left-click on the link below to play the movie or right-click and choose “Save Link As” or “Save Target As” to download. And thanks to Ken for capturing this for us:

5.6 MB

As I mentioned on the Eagle Cam page a few days ago, the Norfolk scenario is somewhat similar to the one we saw develop at the Woodrow Wilson Bridge near Washington, DC with the resident eagle pair nicknamed George and Martha. George and Martha had a long productive history together, but a very aggressive female came into the territory and attacked Martha, injuring her so severely that she was taken to Tri-State Bird Rescue for rehabilitation. George was seen hanging around the new female, but he reunited with Martha when she was released. Sadly, Martha later hurt her elbow when she apparently flew into a power line, and Tri-State was not able to repair her wing, so she was euthanized. George then began hanging around with the new female and they began to bond.

While it is normally true that eagles mate for life, they will “divorce” if they are not productive as a couple. And now we are learning that if a third bird is aggressive enough, eagles might also split up if one partner is driven away.

Both of these circumstances drive home the point that as eagle populations grow, it means we are going to see new and possibly confusing behaviors from our local eagles — especially as eagles are forced to confront the challenges of a growing human population and fewer quality nesting sites near water, which will put pressure on single eagles to take over established nests. Although it’s not pleasant to see an eagle couple driven apart, the upside is that it is a symptom of a growing eagle population.

Norfolk Owl

I also wanted to offer a follow-up on the Great horned owl that had appeared at the Norfolk Eagle Cam a while back — this is the owl that made an appearance at the nest before the female eagle intruder arrived. According to the Norfolk biologists, it now appears this was a chance encounter, and that the owl did not likely know the eagle nest was occupied until it found the female eagle on the nest laying the first egg that night when the two raptors clashed. Since that time the owl has not reappeared, so apparently the owl was not attempting to take over the nest — it was just revisiting a nest it probably thought was not occupied. Our apologies to the owl for mistaking its intentions. ;-)

Other Nests
Some photos of other nests I wanted to share. Here we see the parents at the NCTC Eagle Cam protecting their eggs from the recent snow. Their eggs will hatch after ours. And here we see the two adult eagles on the Kent Eagle Cam in Washington state, where the nesting season is just beginning. Some other eagle cams to watch as nesting season approaches up north: the Barton Cove, MA Eagle Cam, the Ft. St. Vrain, CO Eagle Cam, the Maine Eagle Cam, the Hancock Eagle Cams in Canada, and the USFS Oregon Eagle Cam, which has an annoying intro page that you have to sit through before the cam will load.

Blackwater Eagles

Our 2008 Blackwater Eagle Cam appears to be relatively quiet right now (and we suddenly feel very fortunate about that!), and so we are on schedule to see our eggs hatch beginning around March 1. Of course, we can only hope the eggs are fertile, and we won’t know that for sure until the beginning of March, but our parents have been doing an excellent job carrying out their incubation duties, so there is no reason at this point to think the eggs won’t hatch. In the next blog post we’ll talk more about what we can expect come hatching time.

As for our parents, we know that sometimes they like to visit the Osprey Cam platform, which is near the Blackwater River and a variety of food, such as fish and waterfowl. Photographer Jon McRay got in touch with me recently about some photos he just took of eagles hunting at the Refuge, and he has generously offered to share those photos with us (see below). Based on Jon’s description of what he saw, it’s very likely that Jon was watching one of our parents.

According to Jon, “This past weekend the Snow Geese were in full force and were inside the end of the Wildlife Drive for a while, which made for some nice photos. As the geese were heading back out to the Blackwater River late in the day, some eagles perked up. One, possibly from the cam-nest, took a perch behind the Visitor’s Center on a stake and began watching the geese. She (or he) took flight, a few other eagles joined in, and they began to work on the geese. Within a matter of seconds, an eagle was in hot pursuit of a goose that had broken off from the group. The eagle swiped at it, and the goose fell from the sky. The eagle left the goose in the water, I suspect because it would have been too wet and heavy to carry, and she (or he) probably waited for it to wash up on a shallow patch.”

Below are Jon’s photos; click on the thumbnails for a larger version. As we’ve mentioned before in our blog, eagles will often try to target ducks or geese that have broken off from the group, because that makes them easier targets. As the adage goes, there is safety in numbers, and when a flocking bird goes it alone, that’s usually when it’s most vulnerable.

In addition to these shots, Jon has a fantastic Blackwater Refuge gallery on display at Flickr.com. Be sure to spend some time checking out his work. He has a lot of great eagle shots, including a fantastic eagle mating photo and also an incredible photo/animation of an eagle couple cartwheeling, which is a classic eagle-bonding ritual. Much thanks to Jon for sharing his work! I’ll definitely be highlighting more of his photos in the future.

Until next time,
Lisa - webmaster
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Tags:
eagles, wildlife refuge, eagle cam, eagle eggs, Blackwater Refuge, Maryland

 

Technical Update: First, we want to apologize for the trouble we’ve been having with our satellite dish. When our problem first appeared, our dish provider suggested we reboot the dish modem to fix our issue, and that worked in the beginning, but the problem has come back and the fix doesn’t seem to be working now. It’s possible we need upgraded software, so we’re trying to get this issue wrapped up before the hatching starts, which should be around March 1.

Our parents are doing a good job of incubating the eggs, and so far they’ve had pretty good weather, although it was very windy on Sunday with powerful gusts. We always get a little nervous with really strong winds since eagle nests do come down in windy weather, but fortunately our nest is in the woods, so the surrounding trees help diminish the wind speed.

At the end of last week we saw a couple funny sequences on the cam showing one parent putting grass on the other parent, who was sitting on the eggs. Here you can see the images: Image 1 and Image 2. If you remember, last year we captured some video of the mother putting a pine branch on dad, which he promptly took off, only to have mom put it right back on him. We’re still not sure why the parents do this, but it’s amusing to watch.

Incubation Videos

I have two new videos to share. I captured these last week after both our eggs had arrived. Left-click on the links below to play the movies or right-click and choose “Save Target As” or “Save Link As” to download the movies.

In the first video clip, we see the male eagle sitting on the eggs, and then the female arrives with some fresh grass in her talons. The male eventually gets up off the eggs and flies away, and the female then settles over the eggs and begins incubating them. One thing worth noticing is how she aerates the grass in the cup before she sits down on the eggs. Another thing to look for is how once she’s down, she rocks her body back and forth to ensure that the eggs are tight against her brood patch.

6.8 MB

In the second video clip we see the parent getting up and gently rolling the eggs with both their talon and beak. Often eagle parents will curl up their talons when rolling the eggs so as not to accidentally puncture them.

6 MB

Scenic Blackwater Refuge

Our friend Georgena Terry — the founder of Terry Precision Cycling — was recently at Blackwater Refuge and shared with me some beautiful scenic photos she took from our Wildlife Drive. In the first photo we see the Blackwater River, the marsh, and a group of geese sitting out on the water. The trees on the left are a popular perching place for bald eagles. And in the second photo we see another part of the river marsh at a different time of day, with geese both on the water and in the air. For those who have never been to the Refuge, these photos are classic Blackwater. Much thanks to Georgena for sharing her photography.

Miscellaneous News

As we reported on the Eagle Cam page earlier, the Eagle Cam at the National Conservation Training Center in West Virginia now has three eggs. Much congratulations to them!

Also, we saw an interesting bald eagle post by John Blakeman on the Pale Male raptor blog. What’s interesting about the post is how raptor-expert Blakeman talks about Ohio bald eagles that are nesting inland — away from water — and what they’re finding to eat.

As the bald eagle population in America grows, and choice coastal nesting spots become harder to find, more eagles may be forced inland to find areas to raise their young. While it’s possible for eagles to adapt, it will mean they will have to move away from a predominately fish-based diet, to a diet that more closely resembles the golden eagle, which is common in the West. No one is really sure how successful bald eagles will be at making this adaptation.

Until next time,
Lisa - webmaster
Contact

Tags:
eagles, wildlife refuge, eagle cam, incubation, Blackwater Refuge, Maryland