Eaglets seven weeks old

At this stage, our older eaglet might be only a few weeks from its first flight. Normally eaglets fledge around 9-13 weeks of age, although we expect our younger eaglet won’t fledge until 10 or 11 weeks of age since its development fell a little behind during the bullying period.

Cam watchers have asked if the eaglets can feed themselves at this stage, and we do think they are able to tear up food, although they might have trouble making the first rip in a newly caught fish. In this recent photo we can see one of the eaglets nibbling on some leftovers in the nest. Although it’s possible the eaglets can feed themselves to a certain degree, we have noticed in previous seasons that even when the eaglets can rip off food, they often like to have the parent feed them if the adult is nearby. I guess it’s just easier to have Mom do it!

Branching

Each day our eaglets get a little bigger and a little more independent, and it’s a bit sad to think that in the near future they’ll both be gone from the nest for a good part of each day, flying around the Refuge. But before either eaglet makes that scary first leap, they’ll spend a good bit of time branching. Branching is when the eaglets hop out onto the branches of their nest tree and perch there. This activity helps them develop their perching skills (remember they’ve been sitting in the nest all this time) and also gets them acclimated to maneuvering in and out of their nest and around the tree branches.

Our friend Woody Dawson, who photographs eagles near Susquehanna State Park in Maryland, loaned me this animated GIF (975KB) that he made showing one of his local bald eaglets branching. Notice how the eaglet uses its wings to maneuver its talons along the branch. Once the eaglet is in a secure place on the branch, it can perch there and observe the world around its home nest.

The loblolly pine tree that holds our web camera — and the eaglets’ home — has several branches for the eaglets to choose from. If you look in the bottom left corner of our current Eagle Cam image, you can see a branch that points to the left; in past years we’ve seen eaglets use that limb for branching, so it’s likely this year’s eaglets will use it as well.

We did see a photo from Monday where only one eaglet was clearly visible in the nest. We’re not absolutely positive, but we could speculate that during this time the older eaglet might have been engaged in some brief branching. We’ll continue to keep an eye out for photos showing either of the eaglets standing on that branch or jumping from the branch back into the nest.

In our next blog post, we’ll have some new video clips of our eaglets. And as a reminder, we’ll be announcing the winner(s) of our Eaglet-Naming Contest around the end of the week. Thanks again to all those who took the time to send in their names.

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

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 21st, 2009 at 7:33 pm and is filed under Branching, Eagle Cam, Eaglets, Fledging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.