Good evening Fellow EggAnticipators,
For our second day of the season we had a superb day. It started quietly with Mom and Dad visiting the nest and doing some egg bowl forming and stick placing. After a bit of that they both flew off camera and mating vocals were heard. They returned to the nest about an hour later and continued nestorations. About midday after some hunting and shopping Mom returned and reports are Dad brought her a small bird for an on nest meal. Mom stuck around as Dad went to Stick Depot for more supplies. She worked on the bowl and just stood watch in between times. Dad brought in a huge stick and our first stick wrestle of the year began.
MNBound Eagles ~ Slapstick ~ 03-07-14
Thanks to Birdbrain56 for the vid.
After that episode Mom worked some more on the bowl and Dad went off to the gym to work on his technique. Mom stayed in the nest looking out and seemed to be just waiting for something. Along about 4:43pm she went into the squat position that signals an egg on the way. And boy was it! After only about 5 minutes of pushing and labor squeeking she stood and moved like she had just completed a very difficult task. She was very stingy with letting us see if she had indeed laid an egg but after about 10 minutes she treated us to our first glimpse of her latest production.
MN Bound Labor and Delivery 3-7-14
If you turn up your sound at about 2:38 into this vid you can hear the egg drop into the grass of the nest just before she moves out of her squat position. Pretty cool! Thanks to Linda Grenci Kabis for pointing that out.
First look at the egg.
MN Bound M7 has been laid on 03-07-2014
A big thanks to dragonlainey for both of the above vids.
After showing us the egg she settled in with a slow motion shimmy and took a nap after her exertions. Dad visited a little later but Mom was still resting so he just played with a big stick for a bit. He then moved off to Peace’s camping branch and kept watch over her. She got up and flew off and gave us a real long look at the egg in the nest.
BBC panned around to find her but instead found Dad looking proud and standing guard. After a short time (that seemed like an eternity to those watching) Mom returned and Dad joined her on the nest to get his first good look at the new egg. They interacted for a minute or two and then Mom settled in for the evening. Dad went to his evening perch and all was good in the cottonwood.
MN Bound Eagles 3-7-14 "Honey Come See What We Have”
Thanks to dragonlainey for the final vid of the day.
Lots of chatters came by to offer Mom and Dad congratulations on their new egg. A lot of questions were asked and answered but by far the most asked question was about the IR or night viewing on the cam. There seems to be a lot of confusion about this so I will try to explain what goes on after dark with the cam.
The cam BBC installed for us in the tree is a dual mode camera. What that means is it works very well in both normal daylight situations and in very low light conditions. During the day the cam works as any cam would taking 30 frames a second and sending us gorgeous pics as a video stream. When it starts getting dark though things begin to change. As the light begins to drop the cam compensates for this by turning up the “gain” in the video stream and the low light performance of this cam is very good. That’s why we can still have a decent picture when people who live in Minnesota are reporting it is dead dark where they are.
When the light is too low the cam switches to night or Infrared (IR) mode. You can see this as a change to a black and white and very grainy picture. So the IR mode of the camera is working here for us. However, all IR cams need some form of IR illumination. They are not true “night vision” cameras like you see being used in the movies (by the way most of those cams in the movies are a cheat in post production. I know cause that’s what I do for a living sometimes.) What is not working for us at the moment is the IR light that BBC installed when they went up the tree that replaced the one that shorted out last year.
BBC said the other day that they just needed to hook it up and it would work for us. I found out today that hooking it up is an involved process. They need to connect it to a power controller (a switch) and then evaluate how much power it will draw, calculate the load on the batteries and decide whether that load is too much, check to see if it can be turned off and on remotely so it doesn’t drain the batteries etc, etc. As the equipment was just reinstalled Wednesday they have not had a chance to perform all of the tasks needed to make all of the gear in the tree work together nicely. So we will just put on our eagle patience and give BBC time to work it all out for us so we can be assured that every thing is working perfectly.
Thank you BBC for all you have done to get us to this point and we await a great night picture in the near future.
This has gotten really long so I will leave it at that and say ”See you on the nest tomorrow!”
TalonStrike
I hate to tell you dear but your mouthwash ain't cutting it!
Should I get the hot water and clean sheets ready??
You toucha da egg I breaka youse fingers!
If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to post them below and please if you do comment put the chat name you use in the comment so we can know who you are. Thanks! Also, we'll be updating our official MN Bound LIVE Eagles Facebook Page regularly so you can follow along, like, or share with your friends. We have several site moderators this year to help give optimal information to all that want to learn more about these magnificent birds.