GORHAM, Maine – Atop a great white pine, Big is venturing out on limbs now, spreading his or her wings in preparation for flight. Little, four days younger, also is branching out and should take to the sky soon.
The two bald eagles and their parents are the surprise superstars of a round-the-clock Internet reality show featuring love and adventure, flight and feeding – and fatal sibling rivalry. The full-time eagle blog and video-stream was designed by a group of Maine scientists who wanted to help people connect with nature from their computers.
“It is just so exciting to reach out to people who aren’t necessarily interested in birds, not necessarily bird watchers, or even environmentalists, just everyday folks, working at their computers,” said wildlife biologist Wing Goodale of the nonprofit Biodiversity Research Institute in Gorham, Maine. “And they are able to personally connect to these birds.”
Other video monitoring stations have been set up to observe bald eagles, but they have not reached the public in the same way.
Tens of thousands of Internet viewers watched www.briloon.org/ed/eagle/index.htm as the first eaglet – known as Big – hatched April 10.
The eagle family lives in Hancock County, close to Maine’s north coast. Associate biologist Theresa Daigle said the Biodiversity Research Institute does not disclose the exact location to avoid disturbing the birds.
Goodale said he found a spot near the pine and set up the weatherproof camera in January, training the lens on an existing nest. Eagle couples often return to the same sites year after year, he said, so the odds were good that the nest would be active. Sometimes, Goodale said, the birds will occupy an abandoned nest, so the scientists do not know for certain if the nesting pair came back to a familiar locale.
But whether it is their old home or a nest once occupied by other eagles, the birds made repairs after the winter’s damage as they prepared for new offspring.
When the female began sitting in what biologists call the incubation position, “we were so excited,” Goodale said.
As many as 10,000 viewers watch the eagles each day, Goodale said, down from a peak of nearly 30,000. The Biodiversity Research Institute spends about $2,000 a month on the eagle webcast, he said.
About 400 eagle couples have nests in Maine – compared with around 40 just 25 years ago, said McCollough, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist.
Michelle Morgan of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Washington said the agency is considering a proposal to remove the bald eagle from its current categorization as a “threatened” species. A decision on the eagle’s status is expected by next spring, Morgan said.
“Being our national symbol, eagles do have this symbolism reflecting freedom,” McCollough said. “But they really have become a symbol for our natural environment too. The eagle is a real poster child for our endangered species recovery program. It is so exciting that we have brought this species back from the brink of extinction.”
Still, McCollough said he was surprised by the Internet popularity of the Maine eagles.
“It seems like there is this cadre of people – from all over the country, from Australia, from Japan – who meet on the eagle blog every day and talk about what they are seeing,” he said.
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