April 02, 2007
Gallery Images
First, I wanted to remind everyone that we have started the 2007 Eaglet-Naming Contest. It will run until April 13, so be sure to visit our contest page for details on entering.
Second, I wanted to pass along a cam equipment update. We have a bad solar panel controller on the Eagle Cam. It is not charging our battery, so we have ordered a new one via overnight shipping. The battery on the cam has been charged by our cam technician, but once it runs out of power, we will have to wait for the controller to arrive before we'll be able to get the cam back up for good.
So if the cam goes out again, that's why. And we ask for your patience just a bit longer until the new part arrives.
Gallery Images
We've just updated the Eagle Cam Gallery with quite a few new shots, so be sure to check them out.
I wanted to highlight a few of the photos here in the web log. Our eaglets are 31 days old and 29 days old, and the biggest change happening with our young birds is that they are starting to turn darker as more of their feathers come in. Here is a shot showing the spots where the feathers first started to appear. And in this photo from Sunday, we can see how the oldest chick is getting darker faster, since it has the age advantage.
The chicks are getting better at standing, as we can see in the photo I have posted on this page. Once the eaglets' feathers are in, the flapping that we're seeing will become more productive in that it will actually allow them to lift off the nest and hover above their home. At that point, the eaglets won't be far from fledging.
Another interesting shot in the recent Gallery update showed an eaglet calling out to the parents. At this age, the eaglets are not quiet -- if they have needs, they will call out and let themselves be heard.
Also we saw a couple shots that clearly showed the eaglets with full crops. Again, a crop is a storage area that birds have on their chests where food is collected for later digestion. During a meal, the eaglets' crops will fill with food, and this part of their anatomy is getting easier to see now that the birds are getting bigger.
And if the chicks get hungry while the parents are out of the nest, they can also scrounge around in the nest bottom for leftovers, which is something we see the eaglet likely doing in this shot.
Speaking of food, a cam watcher recently asked about the duck that the eagle family was eating when we had the cam offline on Saturday morning. Eagles prefer fish, but they will eat a variety of things, such as waterfowl, small mammals, turtles, carrion, etc. Unlike ospreys -- which eat fresh fish almost exclusively -- eagles have a more flexible diet, and that is the reason that eagles in the Chesapeake Bay area do not have to migrate like ospreys do. When the weather turns cold and the fish are hard to find -- or the water even freezes over -- ospreys would find living hard if they tried to stay up north. But when the fish are hard to come by for our eagles, they just switch to another food.
Bird News
In other bird news, we have a couple videos from the Santa Cruz eagle nest in the Channel Islands of California. First here is a video of one of the eggs being laid. And sadly, here is a video of one of the eggs being lost, which apparently happened on Friday. In the video, it appears the mother may be eating part of the egg remnants -- that is not an uncommon act for birds. I don't think it's clear yet why the egg failed, but at this time there is still one egg remaining.
Also, I wanted to share a website link for Birdcam.it, the Italian birdcam site. The site features falcon and kestrel cams and also has a forum with an English-speaking section. They've been discussing our Blackwater cams on their site, and we wanted to thank them for giving us some international publicity.
Here at Blackater Refuge we are always amazed and pleased to see how many international visitors come to our website to see our raptor cams. Here you can see a graphic from Google Analytics that shows the international traffic we receive on the Friends of Blackwater cam pages. Although we pull mostly U.S. cam watchers, we also pull a nice amount from a variety of other countries. And it's worth noting that the countries on this chart are just the top tier in our statistics. Included in the second tier of countries that have visited us are Thailand, New Zealand, Iraq, Brazil, Switzerland, China, Romania, Turkey, and Spain -- just to name a few.
We're proud that so many citizens from around the world have shown an interest in our raptor cams and in our little corner of Maryland. We hope all of our cam watchers have found the eagle and osprey families to be not only fun but also educational. And we hope that we have adequately conveyed how important wildlife conservation is to most Americans.
Until next time,
Lisa - webmaster
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