Eagle Cam Update: Snowstorm, Growth Spurt and Hawk Poop

Exactly a month after the first eagle hatched live on webcam in Decorah, Iowa, the three eaglets are almost edging their parents out of the nest.

?They?re almost full grown,? said Bob Anderson executive director of the nonprofit Raptor Resource Project, which operates the pair of cameras that have live-streamed the eaglets? every move since before they were born. ?The parents will be there less and less every day now.?

The eaglets hatched on April 2, April 3 and April 6 in front of an audience of tens of thousands. The site has garnered more than 70 million hits so far.

The eagle family has weathered its share of hardships in the last month. A snowstorm on April 19 iced over one of the cameras and left the eagles damp and shivering. Although the eagles looked miserable, the storm was probably worse for anxious viewers than the eaglets, Anderson said.

?People were calling the police department and telling them to put umbrellas over them,? he said. But the parents ?just did a marvelous job. They just stood there and sheltered the eaglets.?

Last week the wide-angle camera got hit by hawk poop, and has been out of commission ever since.

But other than that, the babies are growing up well, Anderson said. They eat between half a pound and a pound of food a day; mostly fish, muskrats and other large rodents brought home by the father. Anderson estimates that the eaglets weigh between 5 and 7 pounds each now.

?They really are putting the chow away, and they?re growing fast,? Anderson said.

Their light gray baby-down feathers have also been replaced with a darker-gray down, and their adult feathers are beginning to grow in.

?In another month they?ll look more like eagles,? he said. Although their characteristic dark body and white head won?t appear until they?re five years old, ?they?ll look much more regal in a few weeks.?

Now that the eaglets are so big, the parents will be taking a less active role in their lives. If the weather is bad, they might shelter the babies from the rain with their wings.

?But the babies are just too big for them to sit on top of,? Anderson said. He stressed that viewers shouldn?t worry if the parents take some time off from the nest. The babies will continue to grow, and will probably be flying around the Fourth of July.

?This pair has hatched every egg and fledged every baby they?ve hatched,? he said. ?I would bet money that they?ll fledge out fine.?

Image: Raptor Resource Center

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Source: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/05/eaglet-update/

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