Remember that at 9 a.m. Eastern Time (US), which is 3 pm London time, the banding of the eagles at EagleCam will begin. An expert climber will ascend to the nest, purloin the eaglets, and take them to the ground for banding. They will then be returned. This should all be seen live on the site.
If you can’t get on at first, don’t despair: keep trying. It took me about ten “refresh” clicks before I finally got on.
Big fun! I wonder what the parents will do?
UPDATE 1: The process has begun. They’ve set up a table below for banding the eaglets. The camera has zoomed in on it. I suspect tree climbing will begin shortly.
UPDATE 2: (9:25 a.m.) Someone is climbing the tree to fetch the eaglets.
UPDATE 3 (9:28 a.m.) Climber is at the nest.
UPDATE 4: (9:32 a.m.) They’re sending up a bag to put the eaglets in; they’ll be lowered to the ground for banding.
UPDATE 5: (9:47 p.m.) Julian (the eagle-grabber) is GOOD. He’s lowered all the eaglets to the ground in bags, and now they’ll be banded.
UPDATE 6: (10:07 a.m) The eagles are being banded, weighed, and a blood sample taken. The others sit ignominiously on the ground like chickens. They have no dignity.
And if you can get on (I can’t – “Live Stream Unavailable”) you can always check out the Netherlands Storks:
http://www.beleefdelente.nl/ooievaar#tab_faq
Anybody read Dutch?
I couldn’t get on yesterday, either. I guess I’ll wait till it shows up on YouTube.
I just got on, on first try after first opening the discussion thread.
http://www.beleefdelente.nl/ has 8 species, recognisable from their portraits at the starting site. What does John D. Stackpole want to read?
Can you spot, in the discussion somewhere, when the eggs are due to hatch?
Somewhere I got the impression that the event was immanent.
In the logboek section just below the cam at http://www.beleefdelente.nl/ooievaar there’s a day by day countdown. Yesterday was Nog 3 dagen (Still 3 days per Google translate.)
Between 22 and 24 April, expected date is 23 April in Logboek.
“Beleef de Lente” means something between ‘enjoy spring’ and ‘experience spring’.
How would you like the job of Eaglete Bagger?
Qualifications: No fear of heights, high threshold of pain, blood type O, no next of kin.
They’ve put up a blog post here with a few pictures:
http://eaglenest.blogs.wm.edu/2011/04/21/eaglets-get-identification-braclets/
And sex & weight data:
3:25 EDT & adults have still to return to the nest, though the mods say the adults have been sitting in a nearby tree.
Babies are getting restless now!
4:34pm. Male returns to nest. Audience of thousands breathes collective sigh of relief.
Thanks, Diane. I’m still having issues with the site.
For those who are interested in another biological webcam, the Basel botanical gardens has a corpse flower (Amorphophallus titanum) that’s about to bloom. The speed of growth is spectacular!
http://titanwurz.unibas.ch/webcam.php
The Netherlands Storks (see comment #1) have delivered some babies.
Clear irrefutable proof that what was thought to be a myth is true after all.
What will be the next myth to fall before science?
Jerry, I don’t know if you’ll see this but I wanted to let you know it was just announced that a female eagle was hit by a plane at the norfolk airport this morning and they think it was the one from the nest (she wasn’t banded but the physical characteristics were similar and she hasn’t been seen since).
the moderated comments have been talking about it for about the last hour.