Eagle Cam Web Log 2007

Eaglet Videos Pt. 4

Happy Earth Day to all! We hope everyone had a great day.

First, I wanted to mention that our judges with the EagleMan Ironman Triathlon say that they think they'll have our winner or winners for the Eaglet-Naming Contest around Monday or Tuesday. Once we have the names, we'll get the email addresses from WildCam and then contact the winners. And once we have the winners' info, we'll announce the results on the website (cam page and web log). Thanks again to everyone for taking the time to participate.

I also wanted to pass along some miscellaneous eagle cam news -- we did get confirmation from the Maine BioDiversity Research Institute Eagle Cam saying that the eaglets there did not survive the big nor'easter storm that moved up the coast a week ago. We were very sorry to hear that the storm was just too much for the very young birds.

Eaglet Video Clips

In celebration of Earth Day, I'm posting the remaining four video clips of our eaglets that I captured last Saturday from the live TV monitor at the Refuge Visitor Center. Just left-click on the links below to play them or right-click and choose "Save Target As" to download to your computer.

In the first clip, we see that the oldest eaglet is exercising his wings while the youngest eaglet is pecking at an old piece of food. The oldest moves toward the youngest, who for some reason unwisely decides to peck at the oldest, and so the oldest promptly shows the younger bird who is boss and takes the food.

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In the second clip, we see that the eaglets have made up, and the oldest is lying with his head on the youngest. Then the older chick raises his head and calls out to the parent who is nearby, letting them know that the chicks are hungry and want something to eat.

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In the third clip, the parent has arrived with food, which appears to be from the lower portion of a bird, as we can see what looks like the foot of a water bird. At the beginning of the clip, the youngest is feeding first and we can see how the eaglets' feeding method has changed as they've grown. When they were smaller, the eaglets used to have the food placed in their beaks by the adult; now the eaglets stab at the food with a strong, predator-like motion. In this clip we also get a good look at the youngest eaglet's face.

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And in the final clip, we see the end of the feeding session. Here the youngest eaglet tries to commandeer the last piece of bird-foot for himself but it seems he can't quite handle such a large piece, so the parent picks it up again, only to have the oldest eaglet grab it and swallow it whole. Kinda gross, but very impressive. :-)

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We thank everyone for their patience as we got our cam problems straightened out. We think the issue is fixed, but we'll be keeping an eye on it in case any other issues arise.

Until next time,
Lisa - webmaster
(contact)

Eaglet Videos Pt. 3

Before we get to our new eaglet video clips, I wanted to pass along some fantastic news that was just announced this afternoon. As many of our Blackwater Refuge supporters know, over the last year we've been fighting a large housing/commercial development that was going to be built just upstream from Blackwater Refuge. The development would have potentially had a devastating impact on the water quality at Blackwater -- water that holds the food for much of our wildlife. But today, after much effort by local citizens, the Dorchester Citizens for Planned Growth, and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the Maryland Board of Public Works agreed to buy 70% of the land that was to be developed. With this purchase, the land nearest the Refuge will not only be preserved but will be rehabilitated and protected for the citizens, for the health of the Refuge, and for the health of the Chesapeake Bay. Now a much smaller housing complex will be built, but away from the local river and away from Blackwater Refuge.

You can read the CBF press release on their website. We want to thank the CBF and the Dorchester Citizens for Planned Growth for spearheading the campaign to stop this mega-development, and we thank the Maryland government and all those who helped by signing the CBF petition and by writing letters. If the wildlife could party, they'd be partying today!

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The other big news in the past week was the powerful nor'easter storm that moved up the East Coast and caused a lot of havoc for humans and wildlife due to the heavy rain and hurricane-strength winds. Such strong winds often bring down nests, and locally we did lose a few including an osprey nest on the local Severn River that blew down (along with the eggs it was holding) and also a well-known eagles' nest at Shorters Wharf near Blackwater Refuge. The Shorters Wharf nest held two eaglets at the time that it came down, but fortunately the eaglets survived the fall. We hear that one eaglet has a fractured wing, but he is expected to recover. The birds are now at Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research -- the local facility that does such an excellent job of helping our bird life. Much thanks to Tri-State for coming to their aid.

We were very fortunate here that our osprey platform and eagle cam nest survived the storm, and we hear that other cam nests did well too. The eaglets at the Norfolk Botanical Garden survived the storm, and on Tuesday they were banded live on their Eagle Cam. In Maine, they say that the Eagle Cam nest and family are doing fine although many humans are still without power there [Updated Note: I've just heard that there might be a problem at the Maine nest. The parents have been off the nest a lot today, indicating something might have happened to the young.] And from what we can tell at the Barton Cove, Massachusetts Eagle Cam (which is having technical problems) the two chicks are hanging in there as well.

Speaking of the Barton Cove nest, our friend Melanie Lynch from Chesapeake Bay Magazine put together a short QuickTime movie showing how the eagles there dealt with a huge snowstorm in March. After watching this, it's hard to believe they produced two healthy eaglets just three weeks later. Thanks to Melanie for this clip: Barton Cove (Quicktime video, 4MB).

Eaglet Videos Pt. 3

Our Blackwater eaglets are now around seven weeks old and are rapidly becoming impressive juvenile birds of prey, with strong talons, sharp beaks and long wings. They are getting so mature, that today we saw the eagle parent drop off a fish as a way of encouraging them to learn to feed themselves. The oldest eaglet tried to tear into the fish, but gave up and eventually moved over to a partially eaten piece of prey. He did go back though and try to eat the new fish after a while. Our babies are growing!

On Saturday, I captured eight video clips of our eaglets in action (via the live TV monitor at the Refuge Visitor Center). These clips offer an impressive look at how big our birds have become. I'll post four video clips in this web log entry and then the remaining four in the next entry. Just left-click on the links below to play or right-click and choose "Save Target As" to download to your computer.

In our first clip, we see a funny episode between our two eaglets as they lie in the nest together. Often in the gallery we see images where one of the eaglets has a wing or leg stretched out, and in this clip you see the youngest bird sticking his large wing and foot right into the face of his bigger sibling -- who doesn't seem to enjoy it all that much but doesn't get angry.

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In the second clip we see a nice wing flap from our youngest eaglet. It's interesting to note how when one eaglet flaps, the other often watches him. And flapping from one eaglet can often induce the other bird to stand up and flap as well. Apparently the activity is contagious. :-)

Both eaglets will be practicing their flapping a lot as they approach fledging time, and this exercise is necessary to build up their muscles and wing control. As they get stronger, they will be able to raise themselves above the nest and hover briefly. It's at this time that they need to be careful that a strong wind does not blow them out prematurely.

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In the third clip we see a scene that is reminescent of a video clip we saw with the adults awhile back, where one bird puts grass or pine sprays on top of the other. This clip shows the oldest placing a small piece of grass on the back of the youngest and then one on himself. Then the two eaglets play a little game of tug-of-war with the nest grass. While watching the monitor, I noticed that the eaglets often engage in nest maintenance -- practicing skills they will one day use in their own nests as adults.

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In the fourth clip we get a good look at the oldest eaglet's face, and we also see a nice wing flap from the eaglet, along with a small jump as the bird moves around the nest. We can see how strong the eaglets are getting, and it's not hard to imagine that they will soon be branching. "Branching" is when young raptors hop out to the branches of their nest tree and perch. We will lose sight of them when they do this, but it's a necessary part of preparing for that first big flight away from the nest.

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In my next web log, I'll post my final four clips. In those clips you'll see a little friendly competition between the eaglets and also a funny scene where our oldest chick swallows a bird's foot whole.

Until next time,
Lisa - webmaster
(contact)

Eaglet Update

A quick reminder -- April 13 is the deadline for our Eaglet-Naming Contest, so if you haven't entered yet, you have just a bit more time. And thanks to all those who have already submitted names.

Also, April 22 is nationally recognized as Earth Day -- an event that America first began celebrating back in 1970. In this age, it's a good occasion for reminding ourselves of all the things that the Earth provides that we often take for granted. At Blackwater, we celebrate by doing some "spring cleaning" around the Refuge. Because Blackwater is surrounded by rural roads, many drivers think that if they toss out their trash, no one will notice. But our visitors notice and so do the wild creatures, which often come to investigate the trash and get hit by cars. So please join us on April 14 for our Earth Day Litter Pick-up. And if you have children in your group, just let us know and we'll find a safe place for them to help.

Eaglet Update:

Our eaglets got their first look at snow on Saturday when we had a small, rare April snow event. Since the eaglets are over a month old now, they can keep themselves warm at this stage, but they can still get chilled if they get wet (since their feathers aren't fully developed) so the mother eagle covered the chicks and kept them relatively dry until the snow stopped. We did see a funny scene where the oldest chick had to crawl out from under the mother eagle to stand on the edge of the nest so it could relieve itself.

We then had another funny scene on Sunday morning when for some unknown reason, the parents decided to bombard the eaglets with hoards of fish. I don't think we've seen this much food in the nest at one time all season. Maybe this was their way of celebrating Easter. :-)

One cam watcher asked if the eaglets can feed themselves yet. Biologists report that at about six weeks of age, the eaglets can begin tearing off their own food (our chicks are almost that old) but they will still need help in breaking through the tough skin of an animal or fish.

The chicks are getting much darker as their feathers rapidly develop and begin to replace the gray down. One cam watcher asked to hear more about how blood feathers work. Blood feathers are new feathers that are protected by a waxy keratin sheath or shaft, which appears blue in color because it contains a circulating supply of blood. When the feather is mature, the blood supply will recede, the bird will remove the waxy sheath (or it might fall off), and the feather will unfurl. Young birds get all their blood feathers at one time, and the smaller feathers can look like little pins on their bodies, so sometimes the blood feathers are also called pin feathers.

Speaking of feathers and our eaglets' changing appearance, here is a photo that gives you a good idea of what our eaglets might look like if you were sitting in the nest with them.This Alaskan eaglet is at about the same stage as our youngest chick and is turning gray-to-brown as the down is pushed out by the developing brown feathers. Our oldest chick is a little darker than this Alaskan bird.

Other Eagle News:

I wanted to pass along some other eagle news, as a few interesting things happened in the past week. First, our cam watchers who were with us last year might remember the eagle pair called George and Martha, which were a famous couple that lived by the Woodrow Wilson Bridge near Washington, DC and had produced sixteen eaglets together despite being in close proximity to bridge traffic and a loud construction project. Martha had a rather tragic life in that she was first attacked by a female looking to replace her at the bridge nest. Martha recovered from her severe injuries and returned home, only to then apparently fly into a high-tension wire. Her elbow was severely injured, and Martha had to be euthanized. To update the story, the Washington Post just published an article informing readers on the status of George as he is now with another female -- the one that had originally attacked Martha. Some local folks are not happy with George's choice for a new partner. :-)

Also we had some great news from the Channel Islands in California as the nest at Santa Catalina Island now has two eaglets. On March 31 and April 1, 2007, the couple successfully hatched two healthy chicks, and these are the first known eagles to hatch on Santa Catalina Island without human assistance since 1945. As we've mentioned in past web logs, the Channel Islands is the locale that was severaly affected by tons of DDT that were dumped into the local waters decades ago, which subsequently devastated the local bird populations. Visit the Institute for Wildlife Studies website and click on the "Historic Hatch at Catalina Island" to find out more. And be sure to watch the video when you get to the link page. The chicks look so incredibly tiny and vulnerable on that big rock nest. Here's hoping they both make it.

Also, we have two interesting videos that one of our cam watchers captured from the Eagle Cam at the Norfolk Botanical Garden in Virginia. In the first video we see the three eaglets enjoying nest life and stretching their big feet (these chicks are a little younger than ours). Also note how the eagle parent is out of the nest but watching over the chicks. This is what our parents do when we can't see them actually sitting in the nest. And in the second video we see the mother trying to protect the chicks from the same snow that we received on Saturday. Left-click on the links below to play or right-click and choose "Save Target As" to download to your computer.

First Movie (3 MB)

Second Movie (2 MB)

Rare Hummingbird:

Finally I wanted to offer up something a little off-topic. I am a fan of hummingbirds as well as raptors, and the American Bird Conservancy has just posted the first-ever video of the hummingbird called the Marvelous Spatuletail, which is a hummingbird that exists only in a remote valley of northern Peru. It is one of the rarest and least observed birds on the planet. And what makes it special (beside being rare) is the way in which the male uses its unique spatule-tail to attract a mate. According to Surfbirds News: "The Marvelous Spatuletail is unique among hummingbirds in that it has only four tail feathers. The tail of the adult male is more than twice as long as its body and ends in two great spoon-shaped ‘spatules'...The males compete for females by whirling their long tails around their bodies in an amazing courtship display, which had previously only been witnessed by a few ornithologists, and had never been filmed. This display is considered to be one of the most bizarre in the bird world - the males repeatedly attack each other in the air, contorting their bodies and tails into strange shapes at incredible speed."

Go to the ABC website to view the video. Just scroll down and select your Internet speed on the page.

Here's hoping the ABC is successful in its attempt to protect the hummingbird's rapidly vanishing forest habitat.

Until next time,
Lisa - webmaster
(contact)

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
(contact)