What is better than wildlife in the Shire? Here is a guest post from my mother:
Put away your hiking boots; don’t worry about the weather forecast and stop looking for your binoculars and bug spray. Those items used to be a necessity if you wanted to experience the world of bird watching. I have been invading the privacy of an American bald eagle couple for about 3 weeks right from my own home thanks to a link a friend of mine sent me.
http://www.ustream.tv/decoraheagles
The Raptor Resource Project is a non-profit group that specializes in preserving eagles, hawks, owls, falcons and ospreys. The group has positioned 2 live cams attached right next to the nest showing different angles that you can view 24/7. At night an infrared light (not visible to the eagles) comes on so we can still view them in the darkness while they are curled up protecting their young. These eagles have been together since 2007 and have raised 11 eaglets (including the 3 that have recently hatched). They live in Decorah, Iowa 80 feet up in a cottonwood tree overlooking a fish hatchery. The nest is over 6 feet long, 4 feet deep and weighs about 1000 pounds. Their first egg hatched on 4/2/11, the second on 4/3/11 and third on 4/5/11. You can watch inches away as both parents take turn sitting on the eggs before they hatched to witnessing the babies crack through their shells to now as both parents taking turns to bring food back to the nest such as squirrels, rabbits and fish. It is unbelievable to watch the adult come swooping down in the nest carrying the next meal. A microphone is also attached so you can hear doves coo, the wind blow and the rain fall. You listen as the eaglets chirp when they are hungry and hear the parents tear away at meat and bones from their prey. These raptors are huge with a wing span of 7 feet and are 3 ½ feet tall but to watch them take the meat in their beaks and so delicately put it in their babies’ mouth is amazing to watch……….and you wouldn’t be able to if you were walking on the ground with all the other birdwatchers with their binoculars. As I am writing this, I have the website pulled up and am watching both parents bring in more branches and twigs possibly to expand their already 6 foot long home to accommodate the lightening speed growth of their babies. The three siblings will stay with mom and dad for about three months while they mimic the survival skills of their parents preparing to start a life on their own.
So turn your computer on. Go sit outside with your laptop if you feel the need to breathe the fresh air. You can’t experience anything I’ve described by walking through the woods, marshlands or fields looking for birds while you swat mosquitoes.
Well mother I have known for some time that you and your office mates are odd but yall’s obsession with these eagles has gone pretty far. Always talking about the eagles, texting me updates about the eagles and when the babies hatched, emailing me video streaming links. Haha it’s actually not that bad. The eagles are pretty bad ass to have a 2 ton nest on the edge of a cliff and bring their newborns back dead animals as food. It’s also pretty cool to watch eagles live because there aren’t very many and you don’t see them very often at all. Also its good that the organization is doing this to raise to protect and save the bald eagle because they’re pretty awesome creatures. So thank you mother for sending me links and texts and emails, and calling me to tell me eagle updates because it’s pretty cool…I guess.
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