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