Third baby hatched in urban eagle nest
An eagle’s nest near Sidney is a busy place now that a third and final bald eagle’s egg has hatched.
The number of people viewing the nest via the webcam hovers around 2,000, said David Hancock, who operates this and other wildlife webcams through the not-for-profit Hancock Wildlife Foundation.
“I’m excited to get the third chick out,” said Hancock yesterday from his Surrey office.
The third chick was spotted yesterday morning by astute webcam viewers via the video-streaming site, he said.
Bald eagles rarely lay more than two eggs and it’s even more unusual to successfully raise three chicks — but this Sidney pair did it last year and appears to be heading for success this year, too. “Birds in the urban, suburban areas are where most of the [nests with] three chicks are being raised,” he said.
“It really says something neat about adaptability of these birds.”
Hancock, a biologist, flew over thousands of eagles’ nests along the coast in the early 1960s “and I only ever had two single nests in all of those thousands raise three young.”
“The city eagle … has a lot more food apparently available to it than in wilderness areas,” he said. It’s a big drain on the eagles to lay three eggs, he said, “but the stress on the bird to raise them is absolutely awesome.”
Source: www.hancockwildlife.org