As we mentioned on the cam page, on the afternoon of January 20, our female laid her first egg. On January 15, we had seen our couple mating on the nest, and all other signs were pointing to our pair getting down to business, and fortunately they did so rather quickly. Last year our first egg appeared on January 23, so the couple is a little ahead of 2009.
Based on past indicators, we would expect the egg — which is about the size of a goose egg and is dull white — to hatch around February 24 or 25. We would also expect to see another egg about 2-3 days after the first, and maybe a third egg, although we’ve only seen that once in our six seasons with the Eagle Cam.
Over the next month, both parents will share in the incubation duties, although the mother will do it the most. I did get a couple emails from cam watchers who became worried when they saw our parents off the egg. It’s common for raptor parents to delay incubation with the first egg. Biologists speculate it’s to make the first egg hatch closer to the other eggs. Once the second egg appears, the incubation will become more constant. I should point out that our eagle parents are very experienced, so we need to trust in their judgment regarding whether the egg is getting overexposed.
Eagles and Winter
We recently held our 2010 Mid-Winter Eagle Survey at Blackwater Refuge, and we had an excellent showing. According to the stats, we had 173 eagles in the non-roost count (morning) and 124 eagles in the roost count (evening), both of which were higher than the 2009 counts. We suspect our numbers were higher because of the especially cold winter up north and because of frozen waters around the Chesapeake Bay — which drive eagles to our Refuge and its waterfowl population.
We had noticed our Eagle Cam parents bringing birds and possibly mammals to the nest for their meals, but as the water at Blackwater begins to thaw a bit, we did see a fish dropped on the nest (probably by our male) right before the female laid her egg yesterday. Maybe the male knew what was about to happen and was bringing supplies for our female.
Speaking of this cold winter, I was at the Refuge recently and captured a couple photos that give you an idea what a harsh winter we’ve been having. Some of the water at Blackwater is open, but there is also a lot of ice, which is why our eagles turn to other types of food — and why our ospreys migrate!
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Cam watchers have naturally been anxious to know when we will be fixing the Osprey Cam, since one of our birds pushed the cam down. One of the challenges of performing maintenance on the Osprey Cam is that the platform pole is on a dike, and it’s difficult for us to take large equipment (like our bucket truck) onto the dike when the ground is wet. Last year we almost had the bucket truck slide into the water because the ground around the pole was too soggy. We’ve decided that within the next month or so (before the ospreys return in March), we’re going to move the Osprey Cam pole about 30 feet — and closer to our access road — so maintenance in the future will be easier and will not require such a large truck to reach the pole.
So we’re making plans to not only fix the cam but to also move the nest pole and at the same time repair some of the rotted wood in the platform — which will make the whole nest safer for our ospreys. We appreciate your patience as we make plans and wait for the ground around the nest to get hard enough that we can go out and make these changes.
Until next time,
Lisa – webmaster
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Tags:
eagles, wildlife refuge, eagle cam, Blackwater Refuge, Maryland
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