March 09, 2005
State of the Cam
As our loyal cam watchers know, on Tuesday morning it appeared that something hit the eagle nest camera. We have several theories as to what caused the cam to move. The wind was very strong on Tuesday morning, so it could have been the wind itself, or the father eagle being misdirected by the wind causing him to land on the cam, or a branch breaking off the tree and hitting the cam on the way down.
Right now our eagle experts at the Refuge say it's too sensitive a time to go up and reposition the cam. Our top priority is the eagle family. We will not do anything that will make the parents nervous or interfere with their raising of the three chicks. Eagles can be very sensitive, especially when young are in the nest, and spooking them is not an option.
When our Osprey Cam was live, we were able to go up and adjust the camera even with osprey chicks in the nest -- but the ospreys are much more obliging than eagles when it comes to humans visiting the nest, so we are limited in what we can do at this stage.
At this time the plan is to keep broadcasting the eagles with the hope that we will get to see the eagle young as they grow and move around the nest. We plan to reevaluate the situation in a few weeks when the chicks are bigger. If the eagle experts at the Refuge say it's safe to go up, then we'll try to reposition the camera. And that's where we stand at the moment regarding the eagles.
For those who enjoyed our Osprey Cam in the past, we are working to go live again in a couple weeks as the ospreys are beginning to return from South America. We plan to offer the Osprey Cam again on this website for the fifth year in a row. In the last four years, we've seen six osprey chicks raised and fledged, and as our cam watchers know, ospreys are very entertaining raptors -- much like eagles -- so be sure to watch for that (visit our Osprey page for links to the previous Galleries).
We greatly appreciate your support, your photos, and your comments regarding our Eagle Cam. We will continue to post updates here and on the cam page for as long as we can observe our eagle family.
As for photos, you can continue to email them. We'll update the Gallery in a few days with photos taken right before and after the third eaglet was born. One of our last shots of him can be seen in the photo at the top of the page, which was taken on Tuesday morning.
Until next time,
Lisa - webmaster
(Eagle Nest wallpaper for our cam watchers)