1
Decorah eagles become stars
Now that the whole Charlie Sheen celebrity/reality brainmelt thing has kind of run its course, we need new stars at which to gawk. So millions of people are going online to check out a webcam of baby bald eagles, or eaglets, in a nest in Decorah, Iowa. We reported on this last week and as I write this two out of the three eggs have hatched. The third is expected today some time. Over 11 million people have now been to the Ustream live video feed of this event even though very little ever happens. It's mostly a bird sitting in a nest. Sometimes it looks around.
It's a big win for Ustream that gets to sell ads to millions of people. The one I saw just now was from BP talking about what a great job they've done cleaning up the Gulf and how now everything is back to normal.
What a strange world we live in.
Anyway, here it is:
Ummm, it's so NOT "mostly a bird sitting in a nest" and though you think "very little ever happens", that's also not true.
I don't sit and stare at the video for hours on end, I glance back at it every hour or so, and I always see something different.
In the past couple days I saw:
-Male/female change posts so that one could go off and feed.
-The mother feeding the babies bits of food from a carcass on the nest nearby.
-The mother gently nudge the babies/egg back under her as they scoot around.
-The adult eagle calling out repeatedly - perhaps calling the mate back so that they can switch posts.
-The adult eagle having a snack of the nearby carcass.
This is a beautiful, once-in-a-lifetime experience, as though we're up in the tree with them.
There's a LOT going on... life is happening.
