Berry College Bald Eagle Nest Chick Day 24 and 25, White Rock Bald Eagle Nest, Bald Eagle HK, Bald Eagle Smackdown

It's a great time for screen captures at the Berry College Bald Eagle nest. (A lot of s'caps!) These are from yesterday 3/18 -- day 24 for the growing chick. Mom came in with this big fish while the baby is failing miserably trying to get under Dad to stay warm.

Chicks at a very early age point their rear end over the edge of the nest when they need to poop. As time goes by, you will notice more and more "white-wash" on the sticks that protrude from the nest and the supporting branches of the nest tree. This is one second before pooping.

The chick, home alone, keeps intently looking up...

 

 ...at one of the parents perched above the nest (top left of picture):

The parents are finally putting in some crib rails. Unfortunately, I think some of their sticks have fallen over the edge of the nest. (When I take a screen capture, it freezes the video while I select the area to capture. Then after I grab the capture, the video resumes at what's currently happening, so I miss a few seconds of the action -- and there have been a few times that the stick is gone when the video resumes...)

That's a big bite being offered to the baby. But it's capable of taking larger bites now.

They keep futzing with this stick. But it's caught on one of the nest tree's branches. But they keep trying to move it...

This is what's left of Mom's big fish after one feeding with the baby:

The baby is nipping at Mom's foot here. I'm not sure why...

 

 At this age, the food coma comes on pretty often:

But there's another feeding around the next corner... Here's another big bite:

I just liked this picture. It's like Mom and Dad are sharing a secret...

It looks like there's feather plucking going on back there, but I can't really tell. The baby is taking notes...

It turns out that it was some mystery prey that was brought to the nest. Doesn't look like anything with feathers...

You can see some additional sticks have been added around the edges. The baby is going to start venturing out more and more and needs to be contained until it is a bit more stable.

Mom is a lot more stable now, but she still stretches out her left leg pretty often. And baby is stretched out too. So cute!

More stick work...

These s'caps below are all from today, 3/19, day 25 for the chick. This is Mom keeping the baby warm early this morning. It looks like the grasses are piled up a bit helping to keep it warm.

Feeding, feeding, feeding! Food is plentiful and this chick is NOT going to go hungry!

Mom came in with a big hunk of soft grasses. You can see it right in front of her, on the camera side of the baby. I think part of their efforts to keep the baby safe, along with putting in crib rails, is building up the soft grasses to keep the baby in the nest bowl until it's bigger.

 

 Is this a yawn? No. The baby opened its mouth and then looked up. It was moving food from its crop to its stomach. You'll see the parents do this too...

I swear, this is 30 seconds later. Food coma!

Sleeping with leg and wing stretched out.

The baby has watched Mom and Dad and learned how to move grass around the nest. Several pieces got rearranged by the baby...

Stick delivery! See that big stick right behind the baby's head? That's a nice size stick!

I think the mystery prey yesterday was squirrel... Looking back at those pictures I can see that the tail wasn't as recognizable because it was viewed on edge, but today it's flat.

See how intently the baby watches the parent land in the nest? The baby watches what the parents do as part of learning how to be a Bald Eagle.

This is two seconds after pooping. I'm going to catch a poop one of these times!

 

This s'cap is to show the additional crib rails. Still a lot more work to do.

Here's a link to a video of the Berry Nest from this morning posted by eaglewhisperer18. It's got a lot of great footage. There's Dad delivering a Coot and Mom removing the feathers. The baby watches this closely. Then, the baby does a poop shoot, which is so powerful that it falls on its face:

 

 It then transfers some food to its stomach. Then Mom feeds some of the Coot to the baby. Mom eats the Coot's head, beak and all. That's the entire Coot's head in her mouth -- what a size difference! Watch the video I linked to above to see just how easily it went down...

This is another video of the Berry College nest taken by eaglewhisperer18. I didn't see this when it occurred today and am puzzled by this behavior... And I love the look on Dad's face! I'm glad I saw this video! This one is less than 2 minutes.

I took some screen captures of the White Rock nest today. It's nice that they still have great daylight after I get home from work. I couldn't stream that nest at all yesterday. And now today it would at least show a still picture and freeze... (I have DSL and my phone lines are buried and it's been raining all week, which degrades my service.) Here's what I got -- such a pretty setting:

 If the White Rock nest is going to have a 2nd egg, I'd expect to see it today. However, I wasn't able to get a look because my video kept freezing...

There is a new post about Bald Eagle HK, along with some great pictures. Jim Yanello is helping Pam Monahan while she's out of town. Thanks Jim!

Mary Reid Barrow has a column about a Bald Eagle Smackdown that happened recently in Chesapeake.

Berry College Bald Eagle Chick Day 22, Bald Eagle Hunting Coot, Screen Captures From The Northeast Florida, Southwest Florida, and Hays Bald Eagle Nests, The White Rock Bald Eagle Nest Has Their First Egg



It was a wet morning at the Berry College Bald Eagle nest. It's day 22 for the chick. Mom Berry did her best to keep the chick warm and dry:

The nest is in the upper left corner of Georgia, with clearing skies moving in from the west:

Mom Berry was trying to feed the chick here. The baby was shivering. This is worrisome since I've never seen a chick so cold that it was shivering.

Mom settled back down over the baby and I was relieved. She looks miserable... Probably not, her feathers provide a lot of insulation. But I would be miserable if I looked like that!

A friend asked me about what was in the nest. This is nestovers (leftovers)... I see three Coot feet here, so this is leftovers from at least two Coot. I've seen them leave the leg bone and feet for last.

Shivering uses up energy, so I was glad to see the baby being fed once the rain let up. This is Dad Berry. Notice how nice and dry he looks compared to Mom Berry? I've noticed at a variety of nests that the Moms stay on the nest and get soaking wet and then after the rain stops the Dad shows up and he's nice and dry...

Mom returns to the nest and Dad leaves:

Mom takes a turn feeding the baby:

The baby doesn't really have much wings to tuck its head under:

I think this is Dad trying to fit that big baby under him:

I'm not sure if those are pin feathers starting to show along the wing edge:

Mom was trying to feed the baby something stringy.  It's some part of a Coot. She spent forever trying to tear a piece off. She couldn't get small pieces to tear off, so she kept feeding the long strings to the baby. The baby would swallow some of it down and then Mom would grab the end and pull it back up. Here's a tug of war with stringy stuff -- from her foot to her beak to baby's beak:

Family picture, with Mom and baby playing tug of war with stringy stuff and Dad on the right:

Dad is just starting to spread his wings and take off from the nest:

Here's Mom with a big glop of stringy stuff in her mouth. She could not get a small piece torn off to feed the baby no matter how hard she tried!

And slapping the baby upside the head with it didn't help!

Mom ended up eating it in one gulp...

My friend pointed out this article in Mary Reid Barrow's column about Bald Eagles hunting Coot.

The Southwest Florida Bald Eagle chick branched this morning. I have no idea what is in the nest below the chick... Does anyone know what that object is?

The Northeast Florida Bald Eagle nest has one chick in pancake mode:

They could have the Hays Bald Eagle nest on a loop for all I know, it's always the same thing:

The White Rock Bald Eagle nest has their first egg. This is such a beautiful nest with the water in the background. The parents did a horrible job last year. They kept leaving the eggs unattended and eventually a juvenile came in and broke one egg. Then the parents abandoned the other egg. I don't know what went wrong, if they were just both inexperienced or what. (Here's a link to all of my blog posts about this nest.) I hope they do better this year... In contrast to the Berry College nest, the White Rock nest has great guard rails already! I didn't get a s'cap of the egg yet, but here's the view from the different cameras, so pretty! This is the Close Up cam.

This is the Wide Angle cam (it's late evening -- getting dark...):

This is the South PTZ cam: