They’re back! Berry College bald eagles minding 2 eggs for 2015 season

The website is at http://www.berry.edu/eaglecam/

Or their Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/berrycollegeeagles

There is a MacRumors thread from last year Countdown to first flight for Berry College (Georgia) bald eagle chick in which we saw the parents raise one female chick successfully.

I figured to start a new thread for the 2015 eagle-raising effort but the mods could merge the two threads if they prefer and could make a more general thread title.

Anyway, stay tuned for two potential bald eagle hatchlings before mid-February. The college has switched their live stream provider so they’ve been having a few issues, right now there’s just one of the nest cams working.

2014-15: Berry added a third camera (nest cam 2) to the nest tree, and the eagles returned to the nest in September, right on schedule. They once again refurbished the nest and exhibited appropriate mating activity. The first egg was laid on January 6 and the second egg was laid on January 9. We expect to see eaglets hatch between February 10 and February 15

Click to expand...

Last year they just had the one egg hatch (February 22) and so lavished full attention on the chick, a female that fledged out successfully on May 22. Time will tell if they have double the trouble this year! For now they just have to defend the nest against any predators and keep those eggs warm.

Speaking of predators: there’s a nice video here of the papa eagle scaring off another eagle that flew into the nest area from the upper left. It’s cool how he makes himself look so much bigger and acts so ferocious, but then settles ever so gently back on those precious eggs. Many of us are used to songbirds hatching eggs in a few weeks and fledging them out in a few more. These eagles take up to three months before they can fly and only then start learning how to catch their own food. In the meantime the parents both care for the babies.

The nest tree is right on the campus somewhere.

But... you'd probably not see much from the ground, they're way high up. There's pictures of Georgia Power using a cherry picker to reposition one of the cams someplace on the website iirc. And probably they don't like people approaching the tree. I vaguely remember reading it was near a parking lot for a sports arena I think.

Both eggs hatched this season! The second one just hatched a night or so ago. The babies this season are named B4 and B5. They're tiny now but they get big pretty fast.

Link for the webcams at the school: http://www.berry.edu/eaglecam/

Some great contributed screenshots from the cams are on the facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/berrycollegeeagles

The eaglets sure have some bad weather greeting them for the first week of their lives. The mom and dad take turns sheltering them and bringing food.