(1st chick: 10 days old; 2nd chick: 9 days old)

A few items to discuss, so I thought I’d do another blog update.

First, I know folks have been worried about the long time the parents have been off the chicks. We did have mild weather yesterday and the sun was out, so we gather the mother eagle thought she could be off them more. We need to remember the mother has been largely responsible for the chicks, and she needs to feed herself because there hasn’t been a lot of food in the nest, so it’s possible she spent time doing that yesterday. We don’t know if the father was around (out of our view) watching the eaglets, but we hope so. I did see a parent on the nest this morning feeding the chicks twice with what looked like a new fish, so that was good to see.

I also know some folks think we’ve been too hard on our eagle father, but yesterday the NCTC Eagle Cam in West Virginia got their first eaglet, and look what was waiting in the nest for this tiny bird. This is the quantity of food that has greeted our eaglets in past seasons at our Blackwater Eagle Cam. In fact, as soon as an eaglet appeared, our previous father went fishing or hunting, sometimes having two fish or a fish and a duck in the nest together. So we naturally expected this type of behavior from our current father.

I think one of our cam watchers summed it up best the other day when she labeled our eaglets “The Hardy Chicks.” They’ve had to make do with the food available and they’ve also been on their own quite a bit. But they seem to be hanging in there and growing, so they are indeed “hardy” little raptors.

One final note about the eaglets — several folks have asked about their current size. At birth, bald eaglets are about 4-5 inches, and since they are now approaching two weeks old and have obviously grown some, I can speculate they’re pushing about 6 inches, but that’s just an educated guess.

Osprey Return

We did get to see our first osprey on the nest on Thursday! The bird (possibly a female) was around for a little while, but then an eagle appeared on the nest late in the afternoon; this possibly means no osprey is yet claiming the nest as their own, because when that happens, the eagles usually leave for good. While eagles might steal an osprey’s fish, they don’t seem to be willing to challenge the nesting ospreys for their home at the cam platform.

It’s possible our female has returned and she’s just waiting for her partner to show, so we’ll be keeping an eye out for a shot showing two ospreys on the nest together. And for those who are new to observing ospreys — or fish hawks — it is a bit easier to discern the sex of the individual birds. Osprey males often have a white chest, while females often have a “necklace” or brown coloring on their chests. Here you can see a clear example of a female with a noticeable necklace, although I should point out that sometimes females have a very faint necklace that is hard to see from a distance. Also, just like eagles, osprey females are bigger than the males.

We hear the commercial bucket truck is scheduled to come out Friday to adjust our cam, but again, if the truck operator has any kind of delay in his schedule, we might have to put off the visit. They are calling for a slight chance of rain Friday afternoon, and again, that would prevent the bucket truck from going up high into the air to service the pole. Whenever we have to arrange for the bucket truck, it’s a tricky affair because we have to coordinate schedules and gamble with the weather. It’s part of the reason why we don’t like having to get the truck out to the nest.

105th Anniversary of the National Wildlife Refuge System

I wanted to point out that today is a special day for wildlife refuge fans. Today marks the 105th Anniversary of the National Wildlife Refuge System — the only collection of federal lands in America where wildlife is supposed to come first. Blackwater NWR is one of the units in the Refuge System, having been formed back in 1933. This year is also the 75th Anniversary for Blackwater, and we’ll be honoring that event at our Eagle Festival on Saturday, March 15. All are welcome to join us that day.

The Refuge System was formed by President Teddy Roosevelt, when on March 14, 1903, he signed an executive order establishing Pelican Island (in Florida) as the first federal bird reservation. He went on to create a network of 55 bird reservation and national game preserves for wildlife, and these lands eventually became the National Wildlife Refuge System, which today includes 548 national wildlife refuges and 37 Wetland Management Districts (altogether equaling about 97 million acres), which is supported by over 200 Refuge Friends groups, like the Friends of Blackwater, who run the Blackwater cams that you enjoy. Each year the Refuge System hosts about 39 million visitors, who help contribute approximately $1.7 billion to local economies across America.

I’d like to end this web log entry with some words from Teddy Roosevelt — words which remind us why he is considered the greatest conservationist president America was lucky enough to have:

“We have become great because of the lavish use of our resources. But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil, and the gas are exhausted, when the soils have still further impoverished and washed into the streams, polluting the rivers, denuding the fields and obstructing navigation.”

“I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land; but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us.”

“Of all the questions which can come before this nation, short of the actual preservation of its existence in a great war, there is none which compares in importance with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us.”

“Spring would not be spring without bird songs, any more than it would be spring without buds and flowers, and I only wish that besides protecting the songsters, the birds of the grove, the orchard, the garden and the meadow, we could also protect the birds of the sea-shore and of the wilderness.”

“Short-sighted men, in their greed and selfishness will, if permitted, rob our country of half its charm by their reckless extermination of all useful and beautiful wild things.”

Until next time,
Lisa - webmaster
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eagles, wildlife refuge, eagle cam, Blackwater Refuge, Pelican Island, Teddy Roosevelt, National Wildlife Refuge System

 

This entry was posted on Friday, March 14th, 2008 at 8:12 am and is filed under Chicks, Refuge System, Blackwater NWR, Eagle Cam. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.