Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Action in the Eagles' Nest

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Sunday morning I drove over to the Longwood detention pond again to see how the Bald Eagles were doing. I really wanted to find out whether there were two chicks in the nest or only one.

When I arrived, one parent was standing guard in a tree not far from the nest.



Bald Eagles really are magnificent birds!






They can be quite vocal, too.



I waited a while but couldn’t see any sign of movement in the nest.


I sat down and kept watching, in the hope that the nestling(s) would eventually get bored with hunkering down and decide to look out of the nest.

I was right. After 20 minutes a nestling popped its head up. Then a second chick came into view.


One of the nestlings, clearly older than the other, started exercising its wings.


I had never used video on my camera before, so I thought I'd give it a try.



I can’t wait for the young birds to get big enough to be more easily visible – and for them to start venturing outside the nest.

I'm trying out linking this blog posting to Wild Bird Wednesday.

12 comments:

Dorothy Borders said...

How exciting! I'm not familiar with this pond. Can you give its location?

Jeff said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Jeff said...

Go south on Telge (past the junction with Spring Cypress) and turn (south) onto Huffmeister. After a few hundred yards and just after a "Taylor Electric" sign, turn left onto an unnamed short stretch of road, opposite Bergenia Drive. There is a turn lane.
The road ends after 50 yards and you park there. The pond is ahead and to your right. If you look right, to the south side of the pond, you'll see a line of trees and the Eagles' nest is clearly visible in the middle of the line.
If you walk towards it, the best view is just before you reach the sw corner of the pond.

Jen said...

Thanks for posting. I'd love to see the babies.

I like to armchair birdwatch through some of those linkups, to see what people are posting from places like Australia and South Africa since I may never get there in person. I have limited time to comment, but I read most of them. The link is on my latest post if you decide you're interested.

I'm glad I found a more local blog, as well. I can use the help finding birds.

Jenn said...

So exciting! Great job on patience! :)

Unknown said...

Magnificent birds! So great to see the chicks. I hope they'll do well.

Jeff said...

I'm hoping the older chick doesn't kill the younger one. This is likely to happen if the older chick is a female.

Janet Shaw said...

Beautiful Eagle Photos!

Jeff said...

Thank you, Janet. They would be better if I got closer but I don't want to get the Eagles upset in case they abandon the nest.

Stewart M said...

Hi there and welcome to WBW - I used to live at the other end of the Lakes - at Endmoor.

Bald Eagles are such great birds - I saw a couple earlier this month on a work trip to Arizona - the Eagles were much better than the work!

Hope you keep posting to WBW.

Cheers - Stewart M - Melbourne

Jeff said...

Thanks, Stewart.
Looks like your Arizona trip went well.
See you on WBW.

Margaret Birding For Pleasure said...

hi Jeff. so glad you posted on WBW and these are wonderful photographs to see. Seeing the chicks is amazing and I do hope both of them survive. it will be great to see them when they are a bit more grown up. thanks for sharing.