Eagles have landed, and you can see their nest on the Web
Published: April 26. 2008 4:00AM PST
The bald eagle pair perch in a massive nest that comes complete with views of the tops of 100-foot trees and a nearby lake.
And as they tend to their newly laid egg, the world is watching.
People can watch the action live, via a webcam trained on the nest to catch everything from the eagle laying the egg to, possibly, a chick taking its first flight.
“It is amazing to watch them come up from the lake, and come up from the treetops, and watch them glide down into the nest,” said Marcia Langhorst, who is active in an Internet forum that tracks the birds’ progress.
Now that there’s an egg in the nest, “the main attraction is to watch the eagles doing what’s called a ‘nest exchange,’” she said. “One parent will get up and begin to call, and you can expect when you see that, that you’ll get to see this lovely fly in by the other adult to take the first one’s place.”
The webcam is part of the U.S. Forest Service’s NatureWatch program, and it is designed to give people an awareness of what’s going on out in the woods, said Joan Kittrell, wildlife biologist with the Crescent Ranger District in the southern part of the Deschutes National Forest.
“This just represents what’s going on through the whole forest,” she said. “You get so tied up in your life … this just kind of broadens your experience.”
The video also broadcasts to the Oregon Zoo, where it’s part of the Eagle Canyon exhibit, which has proven to be just as popular as the tigers and other exotic animals, said Brent Shelby, exhibit design manager with the zoo.
“It’s really intended to help inspire people to show more interest in the natural world around them,” he said. “And hopefully, that inspiration leads to them going out and discovering some of these spaces and these animals in their backyard.”
But it’s not all easy for the eagles and their egg. There are potential predators like ravens, Kittrell said, as well as the cold weather and snow that has fallen since the female laid the egg last week.
“One morning the female was buried up to her neck in snow,” Kittrell said. “We’re kind of worried because it’s such a late spring.”
That lowers the chances for the egg’s survival, she said. But the eagle pair are very attentive parents and haven’t left the egg unattended, which increases its chances for success. There’s been a nest at the site since the early 1970s, and 21 years when chicks successfully flew from the nest.
This is the first year people will be able to track the whole progress from an egg to a fledgling, if all goes well, she said. The camera was installed in the fall of 2003 — someone climbed a tree when the eagles weren’t there with two cameras and set them up so that there was a good view of the nest.
“They’re adjusted so that if one camera went bad we had an opportunity to hook into the other camera,” she said.
But the first year, there were technical problems with the camera, she said, and for a couple of years, the eagles didn’t nest at the site. In 2006, the camera caught the end of the chick’s tenure in the nest, and viewers got to see it fledge.
“This year, we’re actually getting in at the very, very beginning,” Kittrell said.
Webcam watchers have already seen the pair make the nest, Langhorst said, and if the egg hatches, there will be near-constant deliveries of food to the nest. And people will get to see the little eaglet grow.
“We call them bobbleheads, because they can’t even keep their heads straight,” she said of newly hatched chicks. But as they grow — it usually takes nine to 13 weeks for them to fledge — viewers can track their growth and progress. One stage will be “branching,” she said, when an adult will sit on a nearby branch, and eventually the eaglet will figure out how to get over there and join its parent.
“They grow fast,” Kittrell said. “They start out really small, and they get about adult size before they take off.”
Kate Ramsayer can be reached at 617-7811 or kramsayer@bendbulletin.com.
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