E-1's Big Adventure

On Sunday I was sitting at the computer doing some paperwork, and decided to use a split screen so I could watch the eagles for a while too. Well, I had a really big show when Eaglet #1 (2 days old) was exercising his independence by trying to wiggle out from under Dad.

Here you can see both E-1 and E-2 as Dad tries to corral them both under him. Not an easy task.

Dad works on the nest all of the time - he is the nest builder, and he rearranges it every time he returns to the nest. He works on the inside rim of the nest to make room for the growing eaglets. He was doing that and either E-1 grabbed his beak or Dad caught some feathers of E-1, and the next thing you know, here is little E-1 on the outside of the nest bowl.

Here we have E-2 and the third egg in the nest, E-1 outside the bowl of the nest, and Dad pacing to try to figure out what to do next. He finally decides that he needs to sit back on the egg (which should hatch in the next day or two).

"Hey, Dad, here I am"... little E-1 keeps popping up behind Dad. Dad was very restless and kept moving around the nest.

"Hey, hey, I'm over here"... good thing the weather was warm that day so there was no harm to little E-1.

Bob Anderson from the Raptor Resource Group that provides this camera shows us the horses in the field next to the tree where the eagle nest is located.

This is Mom, who just arrived back at the nest. She looked at Dad as if to say, "what have you been doing up here?"

Mom takes over the duties of sitting on the nest. She, too, moved around quite a bit. Finally she turned to where E-1 was trying to climb back into the nest. She loosens the edge of the nest some, and uses her beak to scoop E-1 back into the nest under her. E-1 isn't so naughty when Mom is around.

And that concludes E-1's Big Adventure on Sunday afternoon!

This is enjoying nature at its finest! If you haven't logged on to check out the eagles for yourself, here is the link.