We have a variety of news to share, so forgive me if this blog post jumps around a bit more than some of our previous entries.

First, I think most of our cam watchers have been mightily impressed with the quantity — and selection — of food that the parents have been bringing to the eaglets. We haven’t been keeping close track, but we have to assume the father is bringing in most of it, because normally the mother spends more time with the chicks at this stage of their lives. We’ve seen two rabbits, as well as ducks, and numerous fish. In this photo, you can see legs, and wings and bodies all around the nest — a young eaglet’s dream!

In the photos I’ve seen, there does seem to be a little pecking going on by the older eaglet, although it’s likely reduced by the fact that the chicks must be well fed at this point. I asked our ranger about it (since he can see the live video feed at our Refuge Visitor Center) and he said for the brief time he was able to watch this morning, there wasn’t a lot of bullying, but he did see the younger eaglet peck at the older eaglet — a bit of a switch since normally the older chick is the one who sets the rules.

We have noticed the younger eaglet seems a bit lethargic at times, but we don’t believe there is anything wrong with it, since we also see occasions where it’s active. We’ve been getting a patch of warm weather lately, and that combined with the fact that both chicks are still very young, might be why they don’t seem super active all the time.

We did see a classic sign last night that we look forward to each year. When the chicks are a few days old, they sometimes like to sit with their heads peeking out from under their parent’s chest. And last night we saw two little heads peeking out from under the mother, a sure sign that they’re already growing and starting to mature before our eyes.

Other Eagle Cams

I know folks enjoy watching other eagle cams in addition to ours, so I wanted to share some links since hatching season is getting underway. Here’s a good selection:

• Channel Island Eagle Cams (California)
• Colorado Eagle Cam
• NCTC Eagle Cam (West Virginia)
• Norfolk Eagle Cam (Virginia)
• Redding, California Eagle Cam
• Oklahoma Eagle Cam
• Washington State Eagle Cams
• Maine Eagle Cam
• Hornby Island, British Columbia Eagle Cam

And for those like me who just can’t wait for our ospreys to return, we hear the Hilton Head, South Carolina Osprey Cam now has an egg.

If you’re looking around for a site that can help you find bird cams, be sure to check out Beakspeak, which provides links as well as updates on what is happening at the nests.

Osprey Cam Update

Our ospreys will be returning north in the next few weeks, so we’ll be keeping an eye out for the first shot showing a fish hawk on our Osprey Cam platform. We plan to have the bucket truck out next week to get the cam ready for the new season, so we might go offline for about an hour when that happens.

As I mentioned on the Osprey Cam page, we have reset the image updating to 45 seconds for the time being, and altered both cams so they are updating from 4am to 10pm. We had to do this because we have a satellite-dish-imposed limit on our bandwidth. Note that this has nothing to do with how many people watch our cams online; it’s strictly related to the dish. We will adjust the cam times throughout the year to accommodate this limit and to provide the best views we can based on what is happening on each cam at any given time. We’re working to get our dish provider to widen our bandwidth limit so we can offer shorter update times on both cams.

As we’ve noted on the Osprey Cam page, we’ve been getting regular visits from a Great horned owl at the nest, and I’m actually going to save that topic for another blog post that I’ll publish later this coming week. But this is the most frequent set of visits that we’ve had at the nest from an owl.

And in final news from the Osprey Cam, Tom Lorsung — a local cam watcher and photographer — sent me a photo that was taken at the end of this week showing a subadult bald eagle leaving the Osprey Cam nest. We thank Tom for allowing us to share this amazing shot.

Eagle Festival

I wanted to remind folks that on March 14, Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge will be holding its 9th Annual Eagle Festival. We have a great schedule of events, and if you come, you’ll be able to watch the live video feed of our Eagle Cam and Osprey Cam on the TV monitors at our Visitor Center. Which means no waiting for image updates! By the way, our ranger has been taping some of the action on the monitors, and we plan to post video clips of the eaglets on this blog and at YouTube soon.

Gallery

Finally I wanted to make a quick comment about our recent Eagle Cam Gallery update. I know some cam watchers likely noticed that their names were not included in all the photos they sent or that all of their submissions were not added to the Gallery. Sometimes I have to spread the credits around because certain shots are submitted by a lot of people. Also, I do edit the submissions to include the ones that I think are interesting or show a series of events that provide some interesting revelations about the eagles’ behavior.

Even if we don’t use all the images, that doesn’t mean we don’t appreciate them being sent. We just have to edit the quantity in order to keep the Gallery at a manageable size. By the way, if you’re new to our cams, instructions for sending images can be found on our Submit Photos page. Thanks again to everyone who takes the time to send them in.

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

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 7th, 2009 at 6:29 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.