Dyfi Osprey Day 1,3&4 Hatch!, Africam Black Eagles Day 4&5, Harrison Bay Eagles Day 64&65 Both Branched!, Center for Conservation Biology Article, (And by the way, Verizon DSL Sucks!)

I've got a bunch of s'caps again today from the Dyfi Osprey nest. When I go to bed at night, I bring up one of the nests that has daylight and record it overnight. I was in the bedroom getting ready for bed when I heard Mom calling. I was so worried about the babies that I came out to the living room, hoping it was food. And it was! Look at this whale that Dad brought to the nest! Mom hopped right up. It had been probably 16 hours since they'd been fed. I read a report that the wind was blowing at and it was still very windy today.

Mom was so hungry, she ate a few bites. Look at the grip she has on that fish!

The babies are crying for food.

Mom only took a few bites for herself before turning to feed the Osplets, making sure they each got bites.

I just like this s'cap of the baby looking toward the cam.

Then it started raining again. I spent two years in Scotland. You can count on it being cold to chilly with some rain every day.

Dad flew in from the back perch, flapping hard against the wind.

He hovered over the nest before gently setting down.

It's still extremely windy at the nest. The wind was hitting Dad broadside and almost blew him over a few times.

Yes, these are two separate incidences. You'd think he'd turn and face the wind...

There was another feeding. That big fish went a long ways.

Dad tried to block the wind. Notice that he curls his talons in whenever he is near the babies. And he finally turned to face the wind!

Later, Dad was on the nest while Mom stood on the edge of the nest eating. When she was done, she let Dad know that she was ready to get back on the nest. But he didn't move. So she hovered over him for a while.

Then the jockeying for position started, with the wind only complicating matters.

Happy Mom, back on her nest.

These s'caps are taken from video. I leave it streaming/recording overnight, which is their morning. Then I do the same when I go to work, which is how I captured the s'caps of Mom and Dad both in the nest yesterday. Well, when I got up this morning, I discovered that the cam had frozen after 4 hours. Then when I got home from work today I found that it had frozen after 2 hours. I guess it's a good thing, since I got 15 s'caps off of 6 hours, so it's not like I needed any more. The bad thing is that the 3rd egg hatched and we missed it...

In the morning while I'm getting ready for work, the first thing I do is run out and start recording the Africam Black Eagle nest. I get what I get until I come out to the kitchen, when I switch over to Loch of the Lowes Osprey nest. And I get what I get and switch over to Dyfi when I leave for work -- since I was hoping to catch that egg hatching. I focused more on Loch of the Lowes and Africam Black Eagle nests when they had were on hatch watch. Usually, the Dyfi runs without freezing. Loch of the Lowes usually does pretty well too. But the Africam Black Eagle cam freezes horribly for me. I don't know what the problem is. It freezes all the time and usually only with a few minutes of run time before a freeze. I do have Verizon coming out within the next 48 hours to repair my phone line. It rained today and I've got noise on my line, which indicates water is getting somewhere that it shouldn't. And since my DSL rides on that line, it adversely affects my internet. Maybe I'll get better streaming of that nest after the repairs are done... I have a never-ending string of problems with my Verizon DSL.

Having said all of that, this is what I got this morning at the Africam Black Eagles. I will try again tomorrow...

Both of the Harrison Bay Eaglets have branched now! While I was watching, the one with the injured nare sneezed. I wonder if it's starting to itch... Anyway, the lighting is horrible, but they are both on the branches!

Here's a great article by the Center for Conservation Biology about the recovery of the Bald Eagles along the Rappahannock River. CCB is one of my favorite conservation organizations.