Berry College Eagles minding 2 eggs in 2020 season

[LizKat]

Well let's hope last season turns out to have been an anomaly; the eagle parents did lose both chicks last year, probably due to the terrible weather and not being able to keep the chicks healthy, although no cause of either chick's death was officially determined.

Looking forward: this year the mom and pop eagles refurbished their nest as usual (this is their eighth season at this nest) and now have 2 eggs they're minding, one was laid on January 13, the other on the 14th. It takes about a month for the hatch, but can take up to about 42 days. So we should be seeing some action pretty soon.

Here's the link for the cams and more info about the Berry College eagles.

Berry College Eagles Nest Cam 1

Nest Cam 1 displays a close-up of the eagle nest and is equipped with infrared (IR) technology that allows viewing at night. This light spectrum is outside the viewing range of both bald eagles and humans. The Berry College eagles nest in the top of a tall pine tree situated between the main...

www.berry.edu

The cameras for web streaming are arranged as in prior seasons, one approach camera on a pole across from the nest tree, and 2 cameras for nest views. The Axis nest cams have sound and infrared capability and are new as of this season; truck and manpower for installation donated by Georgia Power and Light. If a cam is damaged during the season it will not be repaired until after the season's eaglets have fledged.

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[ucfgrad93]

Hopefully they will have better luck this year.

Thanks for posting this @LizKat

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Well let's hope last season turns out to have been an anomaly; the eagle parents did lose both chicks last year, probably due to the terrible weather and not being able to keep the chicks healthy, although no cause of either chick's death was officially determined.

Looking forward: this year the mom and pop eagles refurbished their nest as usual (this is their eighth season at this nest) and now have 2 eggs they're minding, one was laid on January 13, the other on the 14th. It takes about a month for the hatch, but can take up to about 42 days. So we should be seeing some action pretty soon.

Here's the link for the cams and more info about the Berry College eagles.

Berry College Eagles Nest Cam 1

Nest Cam 1 displays a close-up of the eagle nest and is equipped with infrared (IR) technology that allows viewing at night. This light spectrum is outside the viewing range of both bald eagles and humans. The Berry College eagles nest in the top of a tall pine tree situated between the main...

www.berry.edu

The cameras for web streaming are arranged as in prior seasons, one approach camera on a pole across from the nest tree, and 2 cameras for nest views. The Axis nest cams have sound and infrared capability and are new as of this season; truck and manpower for installation donated by Georgia Power and Light. If a cam is damaged during the season it will not be repaired until after the season's eaglets have fledged.

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Thanks for posting this, @LizKat; as before, this will be fascinating to follow, and the very best of luck to them.

 

[LizKat]

Looks like one of the eagle eggs has broken (rather than got pipped from the inside during a hatch) and collapsed earlier this evening. Not sure whether it was fertilized or not. When a nonviable egg breaks, it may either be eaten and the nest area then freshened with more moss and grasses, or else the parent eagles may just remove any larger shell pieces and bury the rest under the fresh material. Similarly a malformed hatchling or one that dies is usually buried under fresh nesting materials.

The mama eagle was arranging and fluffing nesting material around the remaining egg when I looked in there tonight, and has finally settled down on the nest again, after carefully rolling the remaining egg the way they usually do with their eggs periodically.

So a sad beginning to the 2020 season. There's still some hope for the remaining intact egg. However, the window for viability is shrinking now; the two eggs were laid 34 and 33 days ago so another week or so would be the far end of normal incubation.

 

[ucfgrad93]

I hope the remaining one will hatch.

 

[LizKat]

I hope the remaining one will hatch.

So far the eagles are still minding that one remaining egg. A couple snaps from earlier today are posted below.

First photo is mama eagle cussing the papa out for being late to take his shift in the nest. (The second nest cam seems to be the only one with audio). Just before I took that snap she was sort of muttering to herself (or to the egg, I thought at first... figuring maybe she heard the chick trying to pip its way out) and then finally got up and it became clear she was hollering at her laggard mate.

In the second photo, it's change of shift time as the mom has moved up to nest edge to make room for her mate to land and take his turn. In that one it's clear there's just one egg left. The parents haven't given up yet, so as long as they still mind it, there's hope for awhile yet.

 

[LizKat]

Well the one remaining egg has been unattended now for about half an hour, a little unusual but not necessarily problematic in the warmth of the slowly composting nest materials and the air temp being in the mid-50s F this afternoon in Georgia near Berry College. This is also a typical pre-dusk time for the eagles to head off to the nearby water to hunt, eat and bring back food to the nest in case of a hatch and less time to forage for food.

The "suspended development" zone for eagle eggs is apparently between 30-80ºF with no harm to embryo for brief periods. Still it's a little unsettling to observe this going on because other large birds or tree climbing predators can swoop in to take an egg or occupy the nest and do battle with the returning nest owners.

Hatching of this egg must not be imminent because when it is, the chick starts calling even before it pips an opening. and the female eagle then does not leave the nest at all; she answers the call and keeps the egg warm while the chick struggles to emerge. This egg looks a bit scruffy but it's normal for the pine straw to discolor an egg while it sits between times of getting turned. The eagle does not know whether an egg will hatch, so just minds it and awaits the signs of pipping and chirping. So if an egg is not viable they usually do continue to mind it until it deteriorates enough to break. Hope everything's okay with this one... time will tell. If the parents aren't back by nightfall then I'd begin to wonder if that egg is damaged in a way not apparent to us from the cam views.

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EDIT: Well a parent is back on the job for the night shift so I guess that 5-6pm nest desertion was strictly to mind an urge for some fresh fish for dinner... this photo is via cam's infrared, the nest is dark to eagles and anyone or anything actually out there looking at the nest tree.

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[D.T.]

My little G is __loving__ this, her school mascot is also the Eagles

 

[LizKat]

My little G is __loving__ this, her school mascot is also the Eagles

I totally love bald eagles, so fun to watch when they have chicks they're nurturing. Once in awhile I am treated to the sight of a slightly confused juvie landing in a black willow in my backyard and looking around to get bearings... "Uh, this ain't right...." before taking off again for the higher hill and a farmer's fire pond near his parents' nest in the pines a few miles away. That guy stocks his pond w/ bass fingerlings most years but it routinely gets fished out by herons if not the eagles... "the pro fishermen," he admits.

The Berry eagle pair seem to be having a tough go of it lately after a long stretch of managing to raise 2 chicks most years without mishap. Last year they lost both chicks. The mom eagle at Berry has a permanently injured foot from a fight with a predator several years ago; the injury does somewhat impair her ability to land exactly where she wants to sometimes, or to place that foot just where she wants while in the nest, but over time she has seemed to do better with it even though it clearly bothers her sometimes.

If the eagles at Berry College are not successful this year, there are other eagle cams like the one out in Decorah Iowa with a later breeding schedule... eggs usually laid about now so hatching time is mid to late March.

The Raptor Research program does the cams at Decorah and dozens of other sites, not all of them eagles -- osprey, hawks, owls, and falcons... here's a link to their home site.

Raptor Resource Project | Raptor conservation, education, and research

 

[LizKat]

Well a big fat fish has been fetched into the nest for supper this evening, for whichever parent happens to get hungry on that shift. I dunno though, we're at the 43-day mark on incubation of the Jan 13 egg, and tomorrow for the Jan 14 one. So the one remaining egg is still being minded, but it's possible the parents are minding another nonviable one.

The other photo below is from earlier today, a moment of changing of the guard when the papa eagle has moved into nest edge and the mama's about to make her landing.

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[JamesMike]

It is nice having websites like this. Glad you informed us about it @LizKat.

 

[LizKat]

Well the mama eagle has steadily lost interest in the one remaining egg since yesterday, leaving her shift of minding the egg early and not showing up today except for a little while sitting in the nest tree well above the nest to keep an eye on the pair's home.

Some photos below: the papa eagle seemed not inclined to give it up yet, spent all night on the nest (he's who ate that big fish in the photo from yesterday evening) and stayed for quite awhile this morning too, but now the nest holds only the unattended remaining egg.

The window for normal hatch of either incubated egg has closed. Probably one of the eagles will bury the second unhatched egg in the nesting material later on. One year the dad buried a very old egg and the mom dug it up again for one more day of attending it, but doesn't look like there's going to be that kind of ambivalence this time around. Bald eagles do sometimes lay a second clutch, but usually only if something destroys the first effort within a couple weeks.

So the Berry College eagle pair's nesting season appears to have ended without healthy eaglets for a second consecutive year. Sad, but it happens. No one knows if this eagle mom's foot injury is impairing her ability to function well either in hunting for food or in proper turns at egg incubation. The federal authorities will only interfere if she evidences inability to feed or care for herself and can then be trapped and examined for treatment and rehabilitation prospects, so we're not likely to find out more about any of that for now even if she hangs around the nest for awhile before the pair take off as usual for their summer of "just being eagles."

 

[LizKat]

Man that papa eagle does not want to say it's over yet. He brought back dinner again (a turtle this time) and had some of that and is parked on the egg for the overnight. Wow.

 

[ucfgrad93]

What happened to the mom’s foot?

 

[LizKat]

What happened to the mom’s foot?

Cause of her foot injury is not known but it's thought she was injured in a fight with another eagle or predator. She is a fierce defender of that nest and there are or were some videos up on YouTube of one of the times she was fighting off another eagle. It's also possible she was injured while hunting.

Today on the chat roll for this site a couple of people noted that these eagles appeared to be mating the other day... but it would be extremely unusual for them to have another clutch after a full incubation period for the eggs that have failed to hatch.

So far they haven't buried the 2nd unhatched egg, the papa still does a full shift minding it, and the mama was there this morning for awhile, although she seems impatient for him to come back so she can leave again. It's part of what makes me wonder if she's not able to hunt as efficiently as in the past. We don't know that though, and the pair share their food at least while they're minding a nest so only time will tell.

 

[LizKat]

Berry College put up an official update on the status of that nonviable egg. The papa eagle still minds it and incubates it all during the nights because the shell of the egg has not deteriorated enough yet to collapse. The mama pops into view now and then, sometimes with another stick or some more grass for the eventual task of burying the egg, the expected close to this unfortunate season for the pair.

 

[ucfgrad93]

That is so disappointing to hear.