In February 2011, his son, then eight hundred years old, Hunter came home with a card that had an internet connection typed on it. Before he even grabbed his coat and hat, he was at the computer, asking me to help him find a website.
“What is this, Hunter?” I asked because his computer time is still controlled and limited.
Eagle is web cam, Mom!
It appears that the eagle web cam in Decorah, IA shared information with students at Aggasiz School in Ottumwa, IA that day . Decorah’s eagle had laid the first egg. It is expected that the female eagle will lay at least one more, maybe two.
What a strange experience, a mother eagle stoned by wind and snow, trying to hold a dangerous pole in a huge wicker nest. Iowa’s thundering prairie winds could be heard through the web cam microphone, and Hunter and I were both amazed at the force of the wind blowing through it. His feathers were pushed with force, and sometimes he would even lift them slightly and move them. She struggles to maintain her balance and in her nest, while trying to make the best of her perched position on her new egg.
Either the eagle, the male or the female, had carried the hare back to the nest, and the female sometimes, because of the hare’s bite, tore the flesh into the carcass, but she had a great deal of strength to protect the egg. We probably watched her for half an hour before we started to go to the kitchen for dinner.
We, and thousands of people across the nation, put in many long hours during February and March in front of the Decorah Web Cam. He was never born. There was something new to see every minute. We saw the first baby born, but we saw the second hatched, and we and the staff at the Eldon Gothic House Museum were there when the second eaglet was hatched. It was slow, for it happens in a few seconds.
It was more like an hour, and maybe it took more than that, because when we got to the building it had already started. The young man was persistent to see that little little eagle breaking through his protective shell to take the first sick one. to look at the world
We checked every day, waiting for the last egg to hatch. We almost gave up when the following Thursday a crack appeared in the last egg. Just like when we saw the upset on Saturday afternoon, this too was a slow process. In the end, the eagle eliminated the pair of three small eagles.
That’s when the fun really began, when web cam viewers had the opportunity to see a pair of eagles care for baby eagles. From those first pastures to that day, when the first eagle fledged at the end of the nest and over the Iowa countryside, every day was good, and we kept all the triumphs and tragedies.
Also coming to Iowa’s nature drama this year is the Alcoa Bald Eagle Camera at Davenport Opera in Davenport, IA. Both golden eagles and bald eagles now sit on three nests each. Local residents named Alcoa the Eagles of Liberty and Justice. Sadly, the Alcoa eagles lost a brood in one year. It seems to be a testament to the exciting struggles of wildlife (in this case a wildraptor) of a family in the rural land of Iowa in the winter and spring.
It’s exciting this year, if Mother Nature is on schedule, and the Decora eagles should have a pair and the Alcoa eagles should have a pair St Patrick’s Day, the hunter and I can’t wait for the happy event.
