Weekend Birding: Decorah Eagles
With the availability of Ustream and YouTube there has been an explosion of free video on the internet. I have been watching live streaming video of a Bald Eagle nest.
Eggs were laid in February and now all three have hatched. Although mom eagle is still brooding them, they are lively little guys and are constantly escaping from under her feathers and stumbling about the nest.
Mom eagle does most of the child care and appears to be the one feeding the little guys. Usually dad eagle drops off a trout or some other fish and then she rips it apart into bite size pieces for the hatchlings. Eagles eat a variety of foods but the centerpiece of their diet is fish. Yesterday it was something with a long furry tail.
Needless to say, I am absolutely fascinated by this glimpse at nature in action, and an eagle’s nest is something we don’t see every day. The only eagles I have seen in person are the ones at the Wildlife Rehab Facility. I have yet to see one in the wild. We do have them in the Chicago area, but the two nests I know about are both on private property.
I have links to a few other nests with high quality cameras installed and would be happy to feature these if there is interest.
History of the Nest
In 2007 a pair of Bald Eagles built this nest in a Cottonwood tree 80 feet (25m) above the ground near the Decorah Fish Hatchery in northeast Iowa. The nest is huge. It is approximately 6 feet (1.8m) across, about 5 feet (1.5m) deep.
The pair have been together since the winter of 2007 and they have successfully hatched and fledged 2 eaglets in 2008, 3 in 2009, 3 in 2010, and 3 in 2011. It is difficult to tell the male and female apart. The female is a slightly larger.
A camera was installed in the nest in 2009 by The Raptor Resource Project and it streams live video of the nest 24 hours a day.
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Under My Apple Tree 
Leslie…the streaming video doesn’t seem to be working???
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The camera may have been offline when you looked, that happens occasionally. Here’s the direct link to their Ustream page, it will tell you in the upper left corner if the camera is offline and how long it’s been up.
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I watched this pair last year quite a bit but haven’t had time this year. I’ll have to check up on them more often. It was really interesting to see how they tweak the nest as the eaglets grow and get more daring.
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They are fascinating. I had the video up on my widescreen monitor last week while I did my tax return on the laptop. They were a pleasant distraction from the boredom of taxes.
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This was pretty cool. I too have only seen eagles in rehab….at the National Zoo in DC ages ago and in San Diego
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I’m determined to see one in the wild. I may make a trip to Starved Rock State Park when they pass through during migration. It’s supposed to be a fantastic sight to see.
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I found a live streaming video of a hummingbird nest yesterday and spent half the day watching it. This is wonderful!
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I’ve done that too. They’re so fascinating to watch that time just fly by.
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Would love links to other nest. I love this
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The birds are just starting to build nests now and a few are already sitting on eggs. The raptors and owls are usually the earliest to start but there will be more soon. Egg sitting is boring but as soon as they hatch I will get links up for the nests.
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This is remarkable! Thanks for sharing this, Leslie.
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Wow. That is amazing. The first time I looked it was night time, now a very windy day. It took me a while to work out the Decorah was a place and not the type of eagle! I kept thinking but they look like bald eagles…..
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Ooops. I should have made that clear. I changed the first sentence to say Bald Eagle so I don’t confuse anyone else!
I checked on the eaglets this morning and they are huge now, they are growing so fast. And their color is changing too. They were white last week, and now are a grayish color.
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