In Iowa: Why we love the eagles

DECORAH - The world-famous Decorah eagles, again in the spotlight as nesting season approaches, have yet another opportunity to endear themselves to their millions of online admirers.

For most of us, the bald eagle was a little more than a symbol until the Raptor Resource Project's webcam put us on a branch above the nest, enabling us to observe the intimate domestic life of a bird so special that it is revered by Native Americans and yet so common that most Iowans, without going too far out of their way, can see one or more almost every day during cold weather.

Having sworn years ago not to contribute to the overuse of the word 'iconic,” I make an exception for the eagle, whose image adorns flags, coins, government seals and coats of arms around the world.

The bald eagle's brush with extinction 50 years ago engages our sympathy. Its exceptional grace, strength and beauty please us esthetically. We envy its eagle-eye view, esteem its embodiment of freedom and celebrate its status as the wildest of the wild.

But it took the Raptor Resource Project's Decorah eagle cam to show us that eagles also are the most domestic of the domestic - faithful mates and full partners in fulfilling their most powerful genetic mandate: to reproduce.

It is probably unwise but practically impossible to avoid anthropomorphizing the Decorah eagles, known affectionately to regular webcam viewers as Mom and Dad.

Since taking up nestkeeping together in 2007, they have distinguished themselves as parents, successfully fledging against long odds all 20 of the chicks they've hatched.

Being an apex predator is not all it's cracked up to be. Like us, they lose no sleep over being eaten.

But as the nest cam has helped us understand, their life in the wild is a high-wire act with a seemingly unending succession of harrowing threats.

If they are not fending off raiding raccoons or rescuing fuzzball chicks teetering on the edge of their lofty nest, they are, as they were last February, incubating eggs in subzero cold and deep snow.

Once last year's chicks hatched, the drama intensified as hordes of biting black flies swarmed on the defenseless eagles, driving Mom and Dad to scratch out great tufts of feathers and forcing all three chicks to bail from the nest about 10 days before they were ready to fledge.

Now, in a circumstance described by Raptor Resource Project Director Bob Anderson as 'never before documented,” Mom and Dad face possible eviction from their painstakingly constructed nest by a pair of great horned owls.

Or worse: The owls, though one-third the size of an eagle, are such fearless and adept predators that they could snatch eaglets from their nest.

Both the eagles and the owls typically lay their eggs in February. Anderson says the first to do so this year will likely gain control of the nest.

However the power struggle plays out, Anderson said he hopes the temporarily homeless pair will quickly settle in the eagles' nearby backup nest, which is also equipped with cameras and microphones.

Though multitudes are pulling for Mom and Dad, the clash is a natural event in which it would be unethical to interfere, Anderson said.

If we've learned anything from our nest-cam observations, it's that the nature-attuned eagles, unlike us members of the overthinking species, instinctively will know the right thing to do.