(Chicks: four weeks old)

First, I wanted to make a quick announcement about Earth Day (officially April 22). In honor of Earth Day, Blackwater Refuge will be holding a litter pick-up on April 12 and also a tree planting on April 27 and May 3. If you’d like to celebrate Earth Day, this is a great way to do it — for individuals, families, and community groups. The litter pick-up not only helps make the Refuge more attractive, it helps reduce roadkill (animals are attracted to the trash); and our tree planting will help restore vital habitat at the Refuge. So visit our Earth Day page to learn more about joining us and giving something back to nature.

Eaglet Update

Our eaglets are doing well and growing more each day. We’ve recently seen the mother eagle bringing in a little more food, and both chicks seem to be getting fed, although it’s clear the older eaglet is getting the most.

Right now the routine seems to be that when the mother brings a meal, the older eaglet asserts its dominance and the younger eaglet acts submissive. But then once the older eaglet is full, the younger bird steps forward and gets fed. As an indication that the eaglets are getting fed, we’ve noticed we can now see their crops after a meal. A crop is a pouch on the chest area of each eaglet and it’s used for storing food for later consumption. So when you see an enlarged crop, it means the chicks have been given a decent meal.

We’ve had folks ask what the eaglets look like up close, and this photo is about the best look we can give you. This is an eaglet with the second coat of down and also with a few new blood feathers (on its lower right wing). Both of our eaglets are showing signs of blood feathers (dark brown areas on their bodies, especially on the tips of their wings and their backs), so they look a lot like the bird in the photo.

Another question we’ve been asked is whether or not the eaglets are feeding themselves. It is possible at this stage that the eaglets are tearing off some food themselves, although they are still reliant on the mother for a good bit of the feeding. But it won’t be long before the eaglets will be able to tear into a fresh meal themselves.

Miscellaneous Eagle News

Before we get to our new videos below, I wanted to share some miscellaneous eagle news. Biologists in California are helping the eagles in the Channel Islands recover from the lasting impacts of DDT (the banned pesticide), and one way they do this is to remove eggs from eagle nests on the island and manually incubate them, then put the chicks back into the nest once they’ve hatched. They do this because DDT that was dumped into the California waters decades ago still weakens the eggshells of the raptors. Here is an amazing video of two of the incubated eggs, and in the video you can hear what the eaglets sound like right before they hatch. Keep in mind this is the sound the eagle parents hear, which lets them know that the chick is coming. Very cool!

Videos at Three Weeks of Age

About a week ago, I was given some new videotape of our eaglets. These clips show the young birds at about three weeks of age, and they were recorded from our live video feed, which you can see on the monitors at our Visitor Center. You can left-click the videos below to play them or right-click and choose “Save Link As” or “Save Target As” to download them. Also, you can see these videos on our Blackwater YouTube Channel.

In the first video, we see one of the eaglets flapping its wings. This is just the beginning of what will be many hours of flapping practice as the young birds try to develop their wings for that first big flight.

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In the second video, we see the father eagle arrive with what looks like a small mammal. The mother takes the father’s offering and prepares to feed the eaglets. This video gives us a nice view of one of the somewhat rare times when the family is all together.

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In the third video, we see one of the eaglets slicing over the edge. Slicing is the falconer’s term for defecating, and chicks know at a very early age to back up to the edge to relieve themselves. (This is why you see whitewash on many of the branches around the rim of the nest.) Also in this video we see the same eaglet using its talon to scratch its face.

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And in the final video, we see a funny episode where the older eaglet tries to swallow a very long bone — which doesn’t seem like such a good idea to the mother — and eventually the young bird has to cough it up.

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Osprey News

Tom Lorsung recently sent in a beautiful photo taken at one of the water osprey platforms at the Refuge. In addition to our land-based Osprey Cam nest, the Refuge also has several water osprey nests that you can see from our Wildlife Drive, like the one in Tom’s shot. So even if our cam nest action is erratic, we are getting regular action at our other nests.

Also, I wanted to share this amazing video from the Puleston Osprey Cam in New York where the male osprey delivered a fish to the female. Only problem was the male had a hard time removing his talon from the meal, and the female flew away with the fish while he was still attached to it! We hear the male returned to the nest later, so he was all right.

As for our nest, as we mentioned on the cam page, we appear to have three ospreys (some cam watchers think four ospreys) vying for the cam nest. We’ll just have to wait and see if one pair claims the nest and begins refilling it with sticks. We had an odd year on the cam last year, and it appears this year will be unusual too.

A final note: One cam watcher asked about when I’ll start the Osprey Cam Web Log. I’m waiting to see if we’ll actually have a nesting pair on the platform before I start the web log. But in the meantime, for those who want to learn more about ospreys, be sure to visit our Osprey fact page, and also visit our Cam Central page to find links to our old Osprey Cam Web Logs. The 2006 season was particularly rewarding as we had four chicks hatch on the platform that year, and all of them fledged — a somewhat rare occurrence for a North American nest.

Until next time,

Lisa - webmaster
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Tags:
eagles, wildlife refuge, eagle cam, eaglets, Blackwater Refuge, Maryland

 

This entry was posted on Friday, April 4th, 2008 at 7:17 am and is filed under Chicks, Eagle Videos, 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.