Eagles gone wild? Nest cam draws huge interest

DECORAH - Local bald eagles star in a sizzling reality show featuring scenes of intimacy that would make the characters of “Jersey Shore” blush.

Courting, under way now, will soon be followed by actual mating, with eggs arriving around the first of March, and it's all available, uncensored, via round-the-clock, real-time video and audio, streaming from the nest 80 feet above the Decorah Hatchery.

“I'm amazed at the response. We had more than 3 million hits last year,” said Bob Anderson of Decorah, founder of the Raptor Resource Project, which installed the first nest camera in 2007 to gather footage for a documentary film.

Buoyed by the nest camera's huge following last year, “we decided to take it up a notch this year,” replacing old cameras, adding a microphone, implementing live video and audio, and installing an infrared camera that switches on automatically at dusk, Anderson said.

Luther College helped with the upgrade, he said.

“It's big time. It's viral. It really is,” said Greg Vanney, publications director at Luther College, whose Web site is now host to the eagle nest camera.

It's been so popular, with as many as 2,000 unique page viewers per day, that the size of the viewing window had to be reduced to accommodate all the traffic, Vanney said.

Anderson said he has heard from many teachers who have used the site as a teaching tool, and he said he “gets tears in his eyes” when he hears that the nest cam brightens the day of residents at local extended-care facilities.

The nest surveillance also has expanded scientific understanding of eagle behavior - revealing, for example, that the male is a full partner in the incubation of eggs and brooding and feeding of chicks.

Anderson said he is still amused at the discovery that the male rearranges every stick brought to the nest by the larger and dominant female.

With the infrared camera in place, Anderson said he expects to learn that the eagles leave their nest at night for hunting forays.

Anderson, who maintains videocameras at a dozen raptor nests in the upper Midwest, has been a pioneer in the use of video technology to increase understanding of raptor behavior and the public's appreciation of the magnificent birds.

Collaborating with award-winning cinematographer Neil Rettig of Prairie du Chien, Wis., he mounted a miniature camera on a peregrine falcon to capture stunning in-flight footage for the documentary “Raptor Force,” airing on the Public Broadcasting Service's “Nature” series.

Footage from the first camera at the Decorah Hatchery nest became an integral part of “American Eagle,” another Rettig documentary for “Nature” and for which Anderson said he was thrilled to get a cinematographer credit.

Find the eagle nest cam at www.raptorresource.org with a click on “Nest Viewer/Bird Cam” at the top center of the page.