Eagle Cam Web Log 2007

Cam Operations

We are just a day from our possible hatch date of February 28, so I wanted to take this time to discuss a few technical issues that could affect our cam watchers now that we are getting close to the big event.

The Website:

As webmaster, I normally change the "Nest Update" section of our cam pages no more than once a day unless something unexpected comes up, like an equipment malfunction or a weather problem. But on the hatching day, I will likely have two or three updates on the Eagle Cam page during a twenty-four-hour period, as I will try to let everyone know what is happening with the egg.

Because I will be posting more frequent updates during the hatching, I wanted to pass along a browser tip, especially for people who use AOL. If your Internet Service Provider uses proxy web servers (which AOL does), then your ISP is storing our web pages on their servers and may not always have the page with the latest update. In the past, I've had cam watchers using AOL who will often ask me questions that indicate to me that they are not looking at the newest cam page.

AOL users -- and anyone else -- can adjust for this by doing the following: Hold your CTRL key down while pressing the Refresh or Reload button on your browser's tool bar. This will normally force your browser to get the newest page from our web server, and it will show you the most recent "Nest Update" that I've posted. In the past, I've had AOL as my ISP, and this trick has worked for me.

This trick will also work if you think your browser is pulling the web page from the cache (temporary Internet files) that are stored on your home computer's hard drive. Just hold the CTRL key and click Refresh to force your browser to get the newest page. This is only necessary when you think I am updating the page more than once a day.

The Cam Equipment:

I also thought it might help to explain how we run the cams, since it's a topic we don't discuss much in the web log. Both the Eagle Cam and Osprey Cam use wireless technology because the cams are out in the field. What this means is that once the image is picked up by the camera, it is sent via cable to a microwave transmitter, which is located at the nest. The microwave transmitter then sends the image signal wirelessly to a microwave receiver at the Visitor Center where our computers are located. Then the image is sent to our Internet Service Provider using a satellite dish, and once it is on the web server, I can link to it on the Blackwater website.

Sometimes cam watchers might see blue bars running through the cam image like the one you see in this example. Most often these types of image problems are caused when something interferes with the wireless signal as it is being sent from the transmitter to the receiver. Anything can interfere with the signal, so we think the cameras actually do pretty well, since we don't see these types of bars or artifacts in the images very often.

When we have bad weather -- such as we've been having recently -- the snow/rain/ice/wind can also interfere with the wireless signal, and normally cam watchers will notice that the image stops updating when this happens. We've noticed that bad weather can also interfere with the proper operation of our satellite dish as well.

The weather report is calling for good weather during the possible hatching period later this week, so we'll keep our fingers crossed that for once the weather people are right. The warmer weather coming in should help dry things out.

As our old-time cam watchers know, the Friends of Blackwater have been very fortunate this season in that our camera equipment at the Eagle Cam nest has been running very well (knock on wood) as compared to our other seasons when we had technical issues. There are many problems that can occur with our cam setups because much of our equipment is exposed to the elements and because no machine is without problems. From the computers, to the wiring, to the microwave equipment, to the battery, to the solar panel, to the satellite dish, to the website itself, there are many areas where problems can occur. In addition, we've had natural problems like animals eating through our wiring, insects getting inside our battery box, lightning strikes blowing out our equipment, and birds sitting on or hitting our camera so hard they knocked it out of position.

The worst of these problems would be a camera malfunction.

If anything were to happen to the camera itself at this point, we would not be able to do anything about it until the chicks were over a month old, since disturbing the parents at this stage is out of the question. After the eaglets are born, they will not be able to control their own body temperatures for 2-3 weeks, so to be safe we would have to wait until they were about a month old before we would even think about going up to replace the cam.

Fortunately, this is not a problem because everything has been going well, but I just wanted to share the details of what we do, so our cam watchers can appreciate the technical issues we often face. When things are going well, it's easy to take for granted how good our cams are operating. But we've been running our raptor cams since 2001, and those of us who have been around from the beginning know that we should enjoy the times when everything is going great. :-)

Best of luck to our expectant parents this week. We truly hope that we have two eaglets to enjoy, as they are a lot of fun to watch.

Until next time,
Lisa - webmaster
(contact)

The Coming Eaglets

We're one week away from our possible hatching date of February 28. In our two previous Eagle Cam seasons, all five of our eaglets arrived on the 35th or 36th day of incubation, so this year we would expect hatching sometime around February 28 or maybe March 1.

If we go too far beyond March 1, then there is the possibility that the first egg was infertile, but we have no reason to believe that this could be the case. Our parents appear to be young and healthy, and that means we expect to see hatching, barring any unforeseen defects with the eaglet itself.

As for the possible hatching hour, we're not sure if the eaglet will first appear in the morning or afternoon, as we've had firstborns arrive at both those times in the past two seasons.

For those who are new to our cam, here is a series of shots showing the first egg hatching in our 2004-2005 season. The camera was closer to the nest that year, so it's easier to see the first small hole in the egg. (Just an FYI: We moved the camera higher the next season so it would be easier to see the eaglets as they grew bigger. Also we raised it because we had problems with the parents hitting the cam with their wings and moving it out of position).

When the eaglet is ready to hatch, it will turn itself inside the egg and pierce the egg's air sac, then it will take its first breath of air from within the shell. Next the chick will use its neck muscles and egg tooth to pip or punch a small hole in the shell. The eaglet will continue to slowly turn and peck until it has cut a hole around the diameter of the shell so that it can push out the bottom half and free itself. This process is very tiring for the chick and can take 24 hours to complete since the young bird will frequently stop to rest. Once the eaglet is out, it will be wet and tired with its eyes closed, but it won't be long before it dries off and is soon able to see and sit up.

Here you can see a photo our first eaglet sitting up for the mother eagle and looking for food, even as its sibling is hatching right beside it.

As for our parents, they will hear the chick chirping and feel it moving inside the shell, so if the incubating parent is frequently moving off the eggs or is looking down at the eggs a lot, that would indicate that they feel or hear something. Biologists believe that eagle parents do not normally assist the eaglet during the hatching process even if the chick is having trouble breaking free.

Once the eaglet arrives, it will not have to be fed right away because before it hatches, it absorbs the yolk and uses that for early nourishment. However, despite the yolk absorption, in the past two seasons our father eagle has been quick to bring fish and even a duck to the nest as soon as hatching was imminent. Perhaps the father eagle gets excited too. :-)

As for the gender of our chicks, in the book The Bald Eagle: Haunts and Habits of a Wilderness Monarch , Canadian eagle biologist Dr. Gary Bortolotti offers evidence of a sex bias based on observations that he collected while studying 37 eaglet broods around Besnard Lake in Saskatchewan, Canada. He reports, "Even though there was an overall nestling sex ratio of one to one, the order in which the sexes hatched was not random; 63% of first-hatched eggs were females, and 68% of second-hatched eggs were males. A sex bias in hatching sequence has only recently been discovered in birds."

Bortolotti speculates that this arrangement might benefit the family because a male eaglet develops faster than a female eaglet, and females being born first would help even out competition in the nest.

Having said that, I can report that in our first Eagle Cam nest -- when we had three eaglets -- our family did not follow this trend. During that year, eagle biologist Craig Koppie -- from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service -- climbed our nest tree to remove our middle eaglet for use in the Vermont Bald Eagle Restoration Initiative (to reestablish breeding bald eagles in Vermont). After seeing all three eaglets together in the nest, Craig said he believed that the firstborn eaglet was male and the second female. After the middle chick arrived in Vermont, it was sexed, and they confirmed it was female. (See Craig's photo of our handsome brood).

So our nest was unusual in that the female was born second. Since we had three eaglets that year, it's possible the third eaglet created a different dynamic for our nest as far as gender goes.

By the end of that season, all three of our eaglets fledged successfully due to the wonderful attentiveness of our devoted parents and also due to the abundant food that Blackwater Refuge provided for the large eagle family. We hope we are as fortunate this year with our two-egg nest.

Until next time,
Lisa - webmaster
(contact)

Eagle Festival

Eagle Update

We're about 11 days from the possible hatching of our first egg. Our eagle parents had a rough week with our big ice/rain/snow storm on the evening of February 13. Many areas of Maryland, DC, and Virginia are still digging out, as the ice has been hard to shovel. Our mother eagle was a trooper though, and didn't budge during the night, as you can see in our recent Gallery update. The father eagle did his part too, by arriving nice and early to relieve mom, screaming at an intruder, and even throwing some grass on mom for good measure. :-)

In the next web log, we'll talk more about what signs we can look for around February 28 that will tell us if the chick is getting ready to make its big entrance into the world.

Eagle Festival

On March 10, 2007, Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge will be holding its 7th Annual Eagle Festival. This event is also a celebration of the 104th anniversary of the National Wildlife Refuge System, and also the official Grand Opening of our newly renovated Visitor Center.

We just updated our Festival Schedule of Events -- so be sure to check out this newly updated version, as our afternoon Eagle Prowl time has changed.

If you've never been to Blackwater Refuge, the Eagle Festival is a great time to come. We have several Eagle Prowls during the day, which is when one of our most knowledgeable eagle experts -- Zeeger de Wilde -- will take you around the Refuge and help you see our eagles. You can also ask him all those eagle questions that you've been wondering about. :-)

I just noticed today that Zeeger has been featured in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's "Refuge Update" newsletter, and they mentioned his famous Eagle Prowls. You can read the article here (130KB PDF file).

Also at the Eagle Festival will be several opportunities to see birds of prey, up-close and personal. We will have owls, an eagle, and other raptors that have been injured but are now used in educational programs (click on the thumbnails below). Also at the Festival you can learn more about the role that eagles play in the lives of our local Native Americans -- the Nause Waiwash Indians -- who are decendents from the original Nanticoke Indians of the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

Our newly renovated Visitor Center will be a highlight of the Festival, as we recently finished our new second floor, where we have our "Pathways to Nature" Observatory -- made possible by a grant from Wild Birds Unlimited and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. This beautiful observatory features a large waterfowl display and high-quality spotting scopes that you can use to look through the large observation windows. The view outside the windows includes the Blackwater River, eagle perching trees, and the Osprey Cam platform. If eagles are on the osprey platform, the scopes will give you an excellent view. And when you head down to the first floor of the Visitor Center, be sure to check out the eagle nest exhibit, which features a real nest built by eagles.

While you're on the first floor, also take some time to browse through our outstanding Eagle's Nest Gift Shop. We currently have the largest gift store in the Refuge System, and because the non-profit Friends of Blackwater run the store, this means all the proceeds from your purchases go back to the Refuge and will help support programs like our raptor cams. So please take a moment to browse our wonderful nature-related items and maybe get one of our attractive Blackwater shirts as a souvenir.

This year's Festival also marks the retirement of our long-time Refuge manager, Glenn Carowan. During his 35-year career with the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Glenn has worked on 27 national wildlife refuges in 7 states and served as the Service’s manatee coordinator immediately prior to transferring to Cambridge, Maryland in 1989. In 2006, Glenn topped off his USFWS career by being named Refuge Manager of the Year. The Friends of Blackwater, the USFWS staff, and all the folks assoiciated with Blackwater Refuge will miss Glenn dearly. Fortunately, he's off to do good things in the Maryland state government where he will be taking on a high-level job with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. After the Grand Opening ceremony at the Eagle Festival, we will honor Glenn and wish him well as he starts his new job in conservation.

So be sure to join us for the Eagle Festival if you can. And if you can't come, please check out our Eagle Festival Merchandise page to see some of the eagle items we offer during our most popular event of the year.

Osprey Odyssey

Just a quick note for our osprey fans: On February 26, 2007, at 8pm ET, Animal Planet will air a program called "Incredible Journeys: Osprey Odyssey." This is a wonderful show that follows the adventures of several radio-tagged ospreys as they migrate down the East Coast, through Cuba, and into South America.

These young ospreys were part of the osprey tracking program at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and you can learn more about the birds on the university's website.

If you're interested in seeing what happens to ospreys on migration, such as how they fish, where they go, and how they survive (even surviving a hurricane!), then be sure to tune in on February 26 to the cable channel Animal Planet.

And please note that we have heard reports that say the program could also be on February 28, so please check your local listings for February 26-28 to be sure you have the correct night.

Until next time,
Lisa - webmaster
(contact)

Preening

I know we've had some recent publicity for our web cams and for the eagle watching at Blackwater Refuge, so I want to welcome those who are just joining us. If you're new to our site and wonder what we're watching, we have two eggs that we hope are fertile, and if so they will hatch in less than three weeks. Here is our egg scorecard for 2007:

1st egg laid: 01/24/07
Possible hatch date: 02/28/07

2nd egg laid: 01/26/07
Possible hatch date: 03/02/07

In future web logs we'll talk more about what to expect when hatching is near, but if you'd like an early preview, be sure to read our Eagle Watchers' Guide (2.5MB PDF file), which offers a recap of our first Eagle Cam season when we were privileged to see three eaglets hatch and fledge successfully.

I also wanted to address a couple recent questions. First, folks were wondering about the corn cob in the nest. There are cornfields near the Eagle Cam nest, and sometimes when the eagle parents bring in stalk pieces for nesting material, a corn cob comes along for the ride. We think the eagles are pecking at the corn, but we don't think they're eating it.

Also, several cam watchers have asked about which parent is on the nest at night. Normally the mother eagle spends the majority of the time on the nest at night, but we've seen shots on a couple evenings where it looks like the parents might be arguing a bit over who gets to sit on the eggs. This might be due to the bitter nighttime temperatures we've been having lately. Maybe the warmest place is on the nest.

Eagles can withstand very cold temperatures -- they have a warm coat of down underneath their feathers -- but I'm sure that they like to be comfortable. We hear we might get more cold temperatures and a snowstorm around Monday and Tuesday. But I guess if this harsh weather had to arrive, it's better that it comes before the eaglets are here.

Preening

I wanted to talk about preening since we've been seeing a lot of images showing the parents working on their feathers while they've been on the eggs. The importance of feathers cannot be overstated as they literally mean life and death to a bird. And so consequently, eagles spend a lot of time maintaining their feathers, which includes cleaning them, waterproofing them, smoothing them, etc.

An eagle will molt (shed its feathers and grow new ones) every year, although biologists report that not all feathers get replaced in each molt. Molting is a gradual process that occurs mostly in summer but might extend into spring and fall. The flight feathers are not lost all at once, so the eagle is never flightless.

In order to maintain the feathers they have, an eagle will straighten and smooth them, often by using its bill to "zip up" the feathers, so the feathers maintain their smooth and aerodynamic appearance.

In addition, an eagle will apply oil from its preen gland (also called the uropygial gland), which is located at the base of the tail. The bird will squeeze the gland to extract the oil and then work the oil into its feathers. This oil cleans and waterproofs the feathers, and also deters feather parasites. Although our eagle parents are spending a lot of time on the eggs -- and not fishing as much -- they still need to have waterproof feathers so they don't get chilled when it rains or snows on them.

At the falconry site called The Modern Apprentice, they have several photos posted where you can clearly see the preen gland.

When eagles are preening, they will often use their nictitating membrane to prevent their eyes from getting damaged while rubbing their head into their feathers. A nictitating membrane is also called the "third eyelid," and it's a transparent, whitish membrane that moves horizontally across the eagles' eyes and protects their eyes while maintaining some vision.

Eagles also use their third eyelid to clean and moisturize their eyes, to protect their eyes while tearing into a fish or duck, and to protect their eyes while feeding their eaglets, since eaglets can accidentally damage the parents' eyes when lunging for a piece of food.

Woody Dawson, one of our talented photographer friends, sent me an animated GIF that he prepared showing an eagle using its third eyelid. Right-click on the image below and choose "Save Target As" or "Save Link As" to download it. The file is 400KB, so it might play better if you download it first. Thanks to Woody for this excellent example of the third eyelid.

Final Thoughts

A few miscellaneous items that I wanted to mention: First, our 7th Annual Eagle Festival is coming up on March 10. We'll talk more about the Festival in our next web log, but I wanted to say that we've now posted a schedule of activities for the Festival. We might add a few things to this schedule over the next week or so, but this gives you an idea of what to expect.

If you've thought about coming to Blackwater Refuge for a visit, the Eagle Festival would be an excellent time to come as it's our most popular event and it's a wonderful time to look for bald eagles. We will have one of our resident eagle experts on hand to take you around on an Eagle Prowl and point out our local eagles and maybe even some of their nests. Also, we'll be celebrating the Grand Opening of our newly renovated Visitor Center, which features a new second-floor observatory that has spotting scopes which you can use to observe birds on the Osprey Cam platform.

And last but not least, there are a couple other eagle cams online that are seeing some action, so I thought I'd post their links. Our good friends at the National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, have an eagle cam online, and we hear rumors that the nest has two eggs. They recently had some equipment trouble, but it looks like they're back online now.

Also, there are eagle cams posted by First Light Power in Massachusetts, by the Channel Islands in Santa Cruz, California, and by the BioDiversity Research Institute in Maine.

These cams all offer slightly different technology, so we can't say for sure that they will work on every computer and browser, but they're worth visiting as eagle nesting season begins to pick up steam.

Until next time,
Lisa - webmaster
(contact)

Immature Bald Eagles

First thing I wanted to do was answer a question from a cam watcher who wrote in but forgot to supply their email address. They asked if the eagle nest was man-made and how high the nest is in the tree. The nest is a natural nest made by the eagles themselves in a loblolly pine tree. The nest sits about 80 feet off the ground, and our camera is about six feet above the nest. We have to use the services of a professional tree climber to get up there and work on the camera whenever it requires maintenance.

Immature Bald Eagles

In the last week or so, we've seen an immature bald eagle hanging out around the osprey platform -- sometimes by itself and sometimes with an adult. Cam watchers have been asking several questions about the immature eagle, so I thought it would be a good time to talk more about them.

Many folks are surprised to learn that a bald eagle does not have a white head and tail when it gets its first set of feathers. In fact, the young eagle will not achieve the look of the adult until it's four to five years old, which is when it will reach breeding age. Below are a set of photos that show the major stages in the appearance of a bald eagle. Click on the thumbnails below for a larger image:

In photo #1 we see two eaglets with their first coat of down right after their birth (note the egg tooth on the tip of their beak -- they use it to break out of the shell, then it falls off several weeks later). In photo #2 we see an eaglet with its woollier second coat of down. In photo #3 we see an eaglet with the first set of dark feathers coming in and pushing out the down. In photo #4 we see one of the Maryland eaglets that was relocated to Vermont -- this bird was very close to fledging and had most of its first feathers. In photo #5 we see a sub-adult eagle that is beginning to get its all-white head but still has an eye-stripe and mottled coloring on its body. And in photo #6 we see an adult bald eagle with the distinctive all-white head and tail, and all-brown body.

As immature eagles go through the various brown/white stages, they can possess a wide variety of mottled coloring on their feathers, and two birds the same age might not even look exactly the same. Also, immature bald eagles are often mistaken for golden eagles from a distance because of the brown coloring on their heads and tails.

As for the immature bald eagle on the osprey platform, he looks to be between two to three years old. According to our photographer friend Bob Quinn -- who recently took this photo of the immature chasing the adult near the platform -- it appears that at times the eagles are competing with one another, yet we've also seen them on the platform together, so it looks like they might tolerate each other on occasion.

The immature is as big as the adult -- in fact he may be bigger since immatures have longer feathers -- so the adult does not have a size advantage unless they are of a different sex. Immatures and adults will sometimes hang out near each other if they are feeding from the same source (like a carcass or a group of dead fish) but things will turn hostile if one of them tries to steal the others food, which might happen, especially if the immature eagle is having trouble finding his own food due to his inexperience as a hunter.

You can see an aerial food battle in action at this amazing gallery by photographer Stan Bousson, which features a series of shots showing an immature bald eagle stealing a meal from the adult. Based on the photos, it looks like the eagles may have been cartwheeling at some point during the battle.

Winter is a hard time for immature eagles. Many of those that die their first year will die because of starvation. Just because they can fly does not mean that they have mastered the art of catching or finding their own food. Becoming an efficient hunter is perhaps the hardest skill of all to master.

Wanderers

Immature eagles spend the first few years of their lives wandering, sometimes over great distances. So there is a possibility that the immature bald eagle on the osprey platform was not born at Blackwater but is visiting from states north of Maryland or even from Canada. Once an immature eagle is about to reach breeding age, it will normally return to the area where it was born and begin looking for a mate and a nesting site.

Biologists have speculated that the reason immature eagles have different coloring is so adults will not see them as a threat to their mate or their nesting site. If the young birds looked just like the adults, but were not of breeding age yet, they would find life much more difficult as the adults might see them as a threat and attack them.

Immature bald eagles will sometimes sit together in the trees at Blackwater Refuge -- maybe they find solidarity in being in the company of other young eagles or maybe they have a better chance of finding food if they hang around other eagles that are looking for an easy meal.

In this photo by Bob Quinn, you can see five immature bald eagles sitting in a group of loblolly pine trees together at the Refuge. Note that the one young eagle with the whitish head appears to be the oldest, although it looks like he still has some brown coloring on his head so he probably hasn't reached breeding age yet. Much thanks again to Bob for sharing his Refuge photography with us.

We'll update the Eagle Cam Gallery later this week.

Until next time,
Lisa - webmaster
(contact)