She roused herself eventually and at one point had a pretty good breeze ruffling her feathers:
She remained very restless throughout the day, doing frequent egg rolls:
Today, I brought up the cam just in time to see this beautiful scene:
This is day 35 for the first egg that was laid. That's the number of days it's expected for an egg to hatch. It might go a little longer, if the Mom delayed incubating. Bald Eagles will delay incubating full time until all of the eggs are laid. That way, the development of the first egg is delayed, resulting in less space between the babies hatching out. Sibling rivalry can be especially bad if the first hatch is allowed a big head start, which would happen if it hatched 3 days before the second baby. (Keep in mind that the eggs are usually laid 3 days apart.) So, even though we've been seeing behavior that indicates the babies are moving or chirping inside the egg, today is really the soonest I'd expect to see one hatch. I won't keep you in suspense, there was no hatch today. But there might be a pip hole. Here's the rest of my pics from today. First is a pic of pretty light on Mom:
Dad came in to give Mom a break. Dad is on the left and Mom is leaving the nest bowl. Shortly after taking this pic, she left by the back door. Dad is standing on a new pine branch he brought in
Then Dad tries to move the new branch, even though he's standing on it!
He did eventually move the branch, then he came over to check out the eggs.
Here's the interesting picture. I wish I could have gotten this better. But between this not being a PTZ camera and the egg roll happening so fast, this is what I got. When he rolled the eggs, this one spot stayed in the same spot on the egg. Could have been debris or a pip hole. Here's the picture with a circle on the spot, right next to his talon (part of his talon is inside the circle - I'm drawing your attention to the spot right in the center of the circle):
Here's the same picture without a circle on the spot. Is that a pip hole? Only time will tell! (It can take a day or so to go from pip hole to hatch.)
A couple more pictures from today. This one, I think it's Dad on the eggs and Mom comes in with a fish tail.
Then Dad gets up and eats it. Strange, I would have thought that he'd bring her some fish... Maybe she's better at foraging...
Today, I did see Mom favoring her left leg. I'm not sure if she did something to aggravate her injury... There seems to be a lot of Bald Eagles with a lot of leg injuries.
A couple of quick things:
Here's a picture of Bald Eagle Dad Norfolk and Bald Eagle DT that Mike took on 2/4. (The forum needs an upgrade, so there are lines of text at the top of the page. But it's ok to keep going to the forum. It hasn't been hacked and it doesn't have a virus.) This picture was taken after the most recent Bald Eagle strike/death at the Norfolk International Airport. That airport is so dangerous. It should be shut down!
Here's a picture of the Southwest Florida Bald Eagle parents sharing a Valentine's Day kiss that one of their photographers at the nest captured.
Bald Eagle Camellia checked in on 2/14. He is staying local! Bald Eagle NX has checked in on 2/14 and 2/17. She has finally returned to where she was released! Bald Eagle KE also checked in. She found a nice fishing spot!
Here's the s'cap of the Northeast Florida Bald Eagle babies, getting pretty big. Growing is hard work and they need to do a lot of eating and sleeping:
And here's a s'cap of the Southwest Florida's little E4, not so little any more. He's almost as big as his dad! Figure the nest is about 6 feet across... He's not quite half, maybe 2.5 feet from tip to tail. Adults are about 3 feet...
Gotta go. I have a nest to watch! (So excited!)
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