Eaglets almost five weeks old

We have a few new videos to post in the blog. These videos are also on our BlackwaterRefuge YouTube Channel — see the first three videos on the channel page.

To view the videos below, left-click on the video link to open in Windows Media Player, or right-click the link and choose “Save Link As” to download.

In the March 8 clip posted below, you notice a common sight from this season — the mother eagle digging up grass and putting it over the fish meal and then the eaglets. We’ve noticed the mother eagle covering the chicks more frequently this year, although we’re unsure as to why she’s doing it even now when they’re bigger. But she probably covers them to camouflage the chicks (or the meal) from birds flying over the nest. After this clip ended, the eaglets quicky uncovered themselves again. :-)

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In the clip from March 15, you see the father eagle fly in with a fish during a pause in a rainstorm. The mother takes the fish and starts to feed one of the eaglets, although the eaglet seems to get distracted by something toward the end of the clip and the mother is left holding out the food.

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And in the clip from March 21, you see the parent come in with a meal that appears to be the foot of a bird. The younger eaglet starts to feed, but the older eaglet asserts its dominance by pecking the other chick on the head, and the younger eaglet puts its head down and turns away from the meal. This is how the bullying by the older eaglet worked, although there does appear to be much less bullying in the nest at this time. At the end of this clip, the younger chick sneaks a bite.

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We have some additional video from the nest, but I haven’t had time to edit it, so we’ll save it for another post. But both eaglets seem to be doing well and, as I mentioned earlier, there does appear to be less bullying now that the younger bird is getting bigger.

Also, I wanted to repeat something I mentioned on the cam page — folks have asked about the gender of our chicks. We won’t know that until they are close to fledging. By then they will be almost fully grown and we’ll be able to compare their size (to each other and to their parents) to see what gender they are.

On a slightly different topic, I had someone ask about us setting up a deer cam, but the person didn’t include their email address. We don’t plan on starting a deer cam, but there is a good one currently online in western Pennsylvania. Be forewarned that they have a couple different cam shots, and one of them sometimes has a deer carcass, which is used to attract other animals like foxes and birds. The PA cam is especially interesting at night when the live deer and raccoons can appear in large numbers. During the early morning, the cam often has wild turkeys.

As a reminder in case you missed it, we recently updated the Eagle Cam Gallery. Also, our Eaglet-Naming Contest is open until April 18.

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

Eaglets almost three weeks old

As some cam watchers have noticed, in the last two days the adult eagles have cut back their meals to the early morning and late afternoon. We’re not sure why they’re doing this — but it does seem a strange coincidence that it started just as the ospreys were returning to the Refuge. Both parents appear to be healthy and the fishing is good at the Refuge, but the lack of mid-day meals has increased the bullying somewhat in the nest (as it tends to do) and we’re seeing our younger eaglet keeping his head down a lot — trying to look submissive for the older eaglet.

Hopefully the parents will pick up the meal pace here shortly and food will come more freely.

Ospreys Return

We were very excited to hear on Friday that ospreys had been spotted at Blackwater Refuge. And then on Saturday morning, we got our first sighting of an osprey on the Osprey Cam platform. The bird appeared to have a white chest, and it looked smaller than the larger female osprey, so we suspect it was a male. We’re not sure if it’s our resident male (we don’t band or tag our ospreys), but he did come back to the nest on and off, so it’s possible it’s the male owner of the cam platform.

Male ospreys usually return north first, with females following shortly thereafter. Our ospreys winter in Central and South America, so if our male looked a little tired, he surely was. The returning ospreys usually hang out for a while, resting and feeding and recovering from their long journey, so we don’t expect much nest building at this point.

Each year when the ospreys return, they usually find most of their sticks gone from the Osprey Cam platform. Strong winds blow out a lot of the sticks, and the eagles might take some for their own nests. But once the osprey couple returns and begins building the nest in earnest, it doesn’t take them too long to turn an empty nest into a full nest. Biologists believe the nest building helps bond the couple; also, adding fresh material means there won’t be old food and bugs in the nest for the new year.

We haven’t seen a female on the nest yet, and we can’t be sure she survived migration. Ospreys face a lot of dangers down south — mostly from fish farmers and livestock owners who shoot ospreys in large numbers — but ospreys are usually pretty loyal to their mates, so if our female made it through the winter, she should return to the nest. If she didn’t survive, our male will likely be able to find another mate, especially since he has such a fine nest as the cam platform.

Photographer Bob Quinn was at the Refuge on Friday and witnessed some of the early returning ospreys. He wrote me an email to say that he had just seen an eagle try to steal a fish from an osprey, and that pretty much sums up the unusual relationship that bald eagles have with ospreys. While we’ve never seen the bald eagles challenge the ospreys for possession of the Osprey Cam platform, we have seen them regularly attempt to steal fish from ospreys. And since eagles are much bigger raptors, they often succeed at robbing the fish hawks of their meal.

But ospreys are not always helpless victims, and often they will team up as a couple to keep the eagle at bay. In fact while Bob Quinn was at the Refuge, he saw an osprey intercept an eagle that was chasing another osprey with a fish. Our ranger, Tom Miller, has also seen osprey couples team up to keep an eagle from stealing a meal from a parent that was trying to return to the nest with its prize.

Bob has posted some photos from his Friday trip to the Refuge — if you scroll to the bottom of the gallery page you can see the osprey intercepting the eagle. You can also see some photos of a male osprey in a tree eating a fish and photos of three ospreys chasing each other around one of our more popular water platforms. Much thanks to Bob for giving us this in-person look at the return of our popular ospreys.

And speaking of osprey galleries, I also wanted to share another gallery link that a cam watcher shared with me that shows some amazing osprey action photography.

And on a final note, we’re preparing a web page for the start of our annual Eaglet-Naming Contest, so for those who have asked, we’re getting close to opening the contest. When it starts, we’ll post the news on the cam page and here in the web log.

Until next time,
Lisa – webmaster
Contact

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

As we mentioned on the Osprey Cam page last week, it seems that suddenly we’re seeing quite a few immature bald eagles — of varying ages — on the osprey nest platform. In fact on Friday we saw what looked like an older sub-adult on the platform with what could have been one of our Eagle Cam adults.

The Osprey Cam platform is a popular perching spot for eagles because it’s right near the Blackwater River and it offers a high-level view of their fishing grounds. When the ospreys return in mid March, the eagles will no longer perch on the platform, but for now, it’s theirs to enjoy.

But why would we suddenly be seeing so many bald eagles? It’s probably because the weather turned much colder in large parts of the country and also in Canada, and many of these bald eagles that were riding out the winter up north have decided they want to come down to a prime fishing area that has slightly more moderate temperatures.

Eagles from the north nest later than our birds here at Blackwater, so while our birds are incubating eggs, these northern birds are waiting for it to warm up where they normally nest. Some eagles will remain up north during the winter — especially if they are near open water (like at a dam or on the coast) and can find food, but others will move around in search of easier meals. Also keep in mind that immature bald eagles are not tied to a nest or partner, so they can hang out wherever the temperature is good and the food plentiful.

Cam watchers often ask if they can see many eagles at Blackwater Refuge during the winter. Blackwater actually has more eagles in the winter than in the summer. Two factors contribute to this trend: 1) our resident eagles do not migrate south — they stay in the region, although they may wander a bit; and 2) since the Chesapeake Bay area (where Blackwater is located) has a good amount of food and is not as cold as the northern states, some northern eagles choose to come down here for part of their winter. If the winter is mild up north, we tend to see fewer eagles at Blackwater in the winter; but if the weather turns cold, our numbers increase.

In January, Blackwater NWR holds it’s annual Mid-Winter Eagle Survey, where U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employees and volunteers go out on a particular day and do an eagle count, both in the morning and in the afternoon, when eagles are getting ready to roost for the night. Visit our 2009 Mid-Winter Eagle Survey results page to see this year’s count. Our numbers were a little lower than other recent years, but the survey was taken before the weather turned cold.

Speaking of northern eagles, another interesting fact is that bald eagles from the north are bigger than bald eagles from the south. The largest bald eagles are in Alaska and the smallest are in Florida, although there can be overlapping in other areas of the country. But this means that a male bald eagle from Alaska would be bigger than a female bald eagle from Florida — even though females are bigger than their male partners. This size trait is referred to in zoology circles as Bergmann’s Rule, which states “that within a species the body mass increases with latitude and colder climate, or that within closely related species that differ only in relation to size that one would expect the larger species to be found at the higher latitude.” So the colder the home climate, the bigger the eagle.

As for our resident eagles here at Blackwater Refuge, our ranger reports that the Refuge has over 20 bald eagle nests, with approximately 30-40 nests on adjacent or surrounding lands, and over 100 nests located throughout Dorchester County, which is where Blackwater is located. In fact, Dorchester County has the most bald eagle nests in Maryland, as you can see from this Maryland DNR Bald Eagle Nest Survey from a few years ago.

Eagle Festival

A reminder for all our cam watchers that we will be holding our 9th Annual Eagle Festival at Blackwater NWR on March 14. If you’re an eagle fan, this is an excellent time to come visit since we’ll be offering free Eagle Prowls during the Festival. An Eagle Prowl is where you can tour the Refuge with an eagle expert who will help you spot our many bald eagles and some of their nests. In addition, you’ll be able to see live video of our Eagle Cam and Osprey Cam on the TV monitors at our Visitor Center. We should have eaglets by then, so this means you’ll be able to watch live video of our chicks! So be sure to join us for what is our most popular event of the year.

Visit our Eagle Festival page for details. And if you’re interested in spending the night in the area, visit the Tour Dorchester website and click on “Lodging” for details (note that Cambridge is the nearest large town to the Refuge — about 11 miles — and they have a good selection of lodging).

Eagle Cam and Osprey Cam

As webmaster at Blackwater, I’m asked a lot of questions, but among the most frequent are “How far apart are the Eagle Cam and Osprey Cam nests?” and “Are the immature bald eagles on the Osprey Cam our eaglets from past Eagle Cam seasons?”

The answer to the first question is that the two cam nests are about 1/4-1/2 mile from each other, so for a large flying raptor, it’s not very far, and we’ve seen our adult eagles fly the distance in a relatively short period of time. The answer to the second question is that since we don’t band or mark any of our eagles at the Refuge, we can never be sure which birds they are. So while we can guess at the age of immature bald eagles that we see, we’ll never know which nest they came from — or even if they’re Maryland-born birds.

Thanks to everyone for their photos and questions. As a reminder, we hope to see hatching action start around February 27.

Until next time,
Lisa – webmaster
Contact

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