(1st chick: 15 days old; 2nd chick: 14 days old)

We’re starting to see some changes in the family. First, the chicks are getting noticeably bigger, and they’re starting to spend more time sitting at their mother’s chest rather than under her — a sign that they’re more capable of keeping themselves warm. We also saw a few photos where the chicks were moving around the nest a good bit and not just staying stuck in the nest cup.

Over the coming weeks, we’ll see the eaglets get more adventurous about moving around their home, and we might even see them peeking over the edges of the nest to the ground below. This always makes our cam watchers very nervous, but the eaglets have enough sense of fear to know that they shouldn’t jump out of the nest or go crawling over the edge. I should point out that when the eaglets are skirting the edges, the eagle parents seem to be very aware of where their children are — if you look in the photo I posted, you see the mother eagle hovering nearby in case the eaglets get too curious about what’s over the edge. And we have seen photos of a parent herding a curious eaglet back to the middle of the nest after it was too close to the edge.

The next visible sign of development that we’ll be looking for on the eaglets’ bodies is their second coat of down. The eaglets come out of the shell with a covering of light-colored gray down, but after several weeks of age, they develop a darker, heavier, woolier coat of down, which is their last coat of down before their feathers appear. This photo offers a good example of the darker second coat. In this shot you can also see the big yellow feet that will become more noticeable on our cam image as the eaglets continue to grow.

A couple weeks after the dark, wooly down has developed, the feathers will slowly start to emerge — in fact if you look closely at the photo I posted above, you can see several feather shafts starting to appear on the right wing of the eaglet. These “blood feathers” are protected by a shaft and fed by blood until the feathers are fully formed. Once the feathers are fully out, they will appear as dark sections on the eaglet’s body, with the feathers growing more rapidly on the shoulders, back and the wings.

At around four to six weeks of age, the eaglet may be sporting bits of the first two downy stages as well as new feathers. Often the head of the eaglet is the last place where the light-gray down disappears, so the eaglet can look rather funny with light-colored fluff on its head, dark gray on its body, and blackish feathers just starting to come in. In this photo you can see an example of eaglets sporting all three coverings at the same time. But eventually, all the down will disappear from view and the eaglet will develop its first set of juvenile feathers, which will be mostly dark brown with some white patches. We’ll talk more about the all-important eagle feathers in a future entry.

Our Improving Father

As our cam watchers know, we’ve been waiting for our eagle father to get into gear with his fishing now that he has a growing family, and I think that event might have occurred. We’ve started seeing more fish in the nest as of late, and the chicks seem to be getting more regular meals. And the other day, we noticed a male eagle had just brought a freshly caught fish to the osprey platform, and we wondered if it was our eagle father from the Eagle Cam, and if so, would he bother to bring the meal home to his family. Sure enough, after eating some of the head (a common behavior for eagle fathers), the male eagle delivered the fish to his family at the Eagle Cam. And if this wasn’t impressive enough, we’ve also caught a couple occasions where he’s been helping the mother feed the eaglets.

So right now we’re pleased with how our eagle father is stepping up and doing his part to help the family and not putting so much of the fishing/hunting duties on the mother.

Technical Question

I’ve been getting a few emails asking us if the Blackwater Eagle Cam will ever go to streaming video, so I wanted to provide an answer here. The Blackwater cams get a lot of traffic, which we are always proud of, but it would be very expensive for us to offer streaming video on our site with our traffic load. Some websites take on corporate sponsors or get a commercial entity to host and run the cam to help pay for the costs. Also, some cams limit the number of people who can view the cam or limit how long they can watch in order to keep the cost of streaming down. This is something the Friends of Blackwater have chosen not to do. We prefer to make our cams non-commercial and open to anyone who wants to watch them — for as long as they want to watch them. So at this time, we do not have plans to go to streaming video.

I also wanted to point out that we keep the refresh times on the Eagle Cam and Osprey Cam at the times you see because we are limited in how many images we can upload using our satellite dish. Our dish provider will turn us off if we exceed a certain limit each month, so that is why we keep one cam at 30 seconds and the other at 45 or 60 seconds. I should point out that this has nothing to do with how many people are watching — it has to do with how many unique images we send from the field up to our website each minute.

Other Eagle News

A big congratulations to the folks at the NCTC Eagle Cam in West Virginia. They now have three healthy eaglets and a father that appears to be more than up to the challenge of feeding such a large family.

Also, we heard some good news from the Norfolk Eagle Cam — the eagle pair there have started laying a second clutch after the intruder female caused them to abandon their previous clutch.

If you have some time, be sure to also check out the eaglets at the Florida Eagle Cam — these birds are getting very big and are starting to exercise their wings. This will give you an idea as to what our birds will look like in a couple of months.

Osprey Cam

We haven’t seen another sighting of an osprey on the platform since last week, so we suspect the osprey we did see might have just been a visitor. Right now ospreys are moving up the East Coast to places as far north as New England and Canada, so some ospreys we see at Blackwater will nest here, and some are just stopping to rest and feed before they head farther north. In case you missed my posting on the cam page, be sure to check out Bob Quinn’s new photos — he provides a lot of great shots showing ospreys playing around the Refuge.

I should also point out the eagle you see at the end of Bob’s photos on that page — Bob said that eagle flew from the trees to the platform after it got a little nervous about Bob being around. There is a possibility that is our Eagle Cam father because we know he likes to perch on the Osprey Cam nest when no ospreys are around.

Special Treat

Finally, I wanted to offer some Alaskan eagle photos as a special treat. These were loaned to me by photographer Frank Severance, and he took these amazing shots in Haines, Alaska. In the first shot we see an adult and an immature bald eagle sitting in a tree together. In the second shot, we see an adult bald eagle snatching a fish out of the water. And in the final shot, we see a wild looking battle between an aggressive immature bald eagle and an adult. Much thanks to Frank for sharing these wonderful photos. Click on the thumbnails for larger versions.

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

 

(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

 

As I mentioned on the cam page today, I’ve just uploaded six new videos to our Blackwater YouTube Channel. In this web log entry, I’m offering a few higher-quality copies of some of the more interesting videos from our YouTube channel and also offering some discussion about the family behavior on display.

As for the current standing at the nest, our father eagle has been erratic, to put it politely. The mother eagle has had to leave the chicks for long periods (especially in the morning) to go hunting. Sometimes the father returns to sit on the chicks, sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes he helps feed them (usually with mom’s food), sometimes he doesn’t.

So at this point, we’re just happy that the eaglets seem to be hardy enough to withstand the cold when mom is gone. And we’re also happy that no predators have tried to visit the nest while she’s away. In all fairness to the father, it’s possible he’s sitting in the nest tree or in a nearby tree when the mother is gone — watching over the nest — but of course we can’t see that from our view. And it would definitely be better if he was sitting on the eaglets when it’s only 25 degrees out.

But enough about that, let’s go to the clips. In our first featured clip below, we see the mother eagle flies in with a fish. Both parents seem to be calling out during this video, and we’re not sure who or what they’re calling to, but it could be another bird that was interested in the fish. If you’d like to hear the sound the parents are probably making, listen to this audio file:

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While watching the cam feed at the Refuge, I noticed that one eaglet is a little bigger than the other, so there is a slight size difference. Also, the older eaglet was pecking the younger chick on the head a bit to establish its dominance in the nest (a very normal behavior). One interesting behavior I saw though was that the younger eaglet was also doing its share of pecking at the older bird. In fact, on the day the second chick hatched — when it could barely hold up its head — it was still trying to peck at its older sibling, often falling down in the process.

Pecking is an instinctual trait with eaglets, and seeing as how they do it almost straight out of the egg, you wonder if it might be nature’s way of helping to strengthen the eaglets’ necks so they can later tear up food to feed themselves.

In the second clip, we see some eaglet sibling rivalry on display. At first the older eaglet pecks at the younger bird to make the youngster keep its head down, then the two eaglets play tug-of-war with their beaks. Biologists state that normally parents do not interfere with sibling squabbles, but in this clip it seems that the parent tries to interrupt the pecking both times, and eventually stops the fighting altogether by ending the feeding session and sitting on them.

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In the third clip, we see a feeding session between one parent and the eaglets. The feeding sessions are touching in a way because you can see how patient the parent has to be while trying to feed little eaglets that keep looking around or falling over or dropping the food that the parent passes to them. Sometimes the piece of food is too big, and then the parent bites down on it to make it a bit smaller, and passes it off again. At this stage of their lives, the eaglets definitely require some patience.

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And for our final clip, we see a short look at how the mother eagle settles down for the night — first wiggling herself so she is comfortable over the eaglets, then tucking her beak into her feathers. Biologists state that birds tuck their beaks into their feathers to reduce heat loss during the night.

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We hope you enjoyed these videos — and the two extra videos on YouTube. We’ll try to capture some more shots as the eagles continue to grow and begin developing their all-important feathers.

And thanks again to all those who have been following our birds, watching our videos, emailing questions, and sending in their cam photos. We always appreciate the support our cams receive.

Eagle Cam Merchandise

I wanted to announce that our online Eagle’s Nest Gift Shop is now selling Eagle Cam t-shirts (for adults and kids) and is also selling a DVD video featuring highlights from last season’s nest — the nest with our youngsters Justice and Majesty. If you’d like to help us spread the word about the Blackwater Eagle Cams or if you’d like some souvenirs of our cam but you can’t attend the Eagle Festival on Saturday, this merchandise might be just the thing you’re looking for. So visit our cam store page and check out our new items. Also note that we’re offering a specially priced DVD/t-shirt combo that comes with a free Eagle Cam postcard.

And as a final reminder, all proceeds from our store go toward supporting projects at the Refuge, including our raptor cams.

Until next time,
Lisa - webmaster
Contact

Tags:
eagles, wildlife refuge, eagle cam, eaglet videos, Blackwater Refuge, Maryland