Baby birds ...

We also came back from Atlanta and the baby birds had

already flown away!

At least I hope they flew away and nothing happened to them

And speaking of birds......here in Richmond we have been watching the

Richmond eagles on the James River.

The pair, James and Virginia, have been together for at least 10 years

They have already had 18 babies

Then they laid 2 more eggs

The Center for Conservation Biology is a reserach group with the College of

William & Mary and the Virginia Commonwealth University. They had a camera installed above the nest in order to conduct research.

It was very interesting watching the mother eagle lay the eggs and then to witness the hatching. People here in Richmond embraced the babies, named R1 and R2. At times, it was brutal watching nature. R1 was the bigger baby, a female. R2 was a male and much smaller. As in "only the strongest survive"...R1 was horrible to R2. Often pecking him so bad that he would miss an entire feeding.

Sometimes I had to close my internet, I just couldn't watch. But as the commentators always reminded us, this is nature.

Then one day the mother and father quit bringing food to the nest. The experts didn't know what the problem was, didn't feel it was the camera but decided the best thing to do was to take the camera down. The parents stayed at the tree on branches close to the nest but they did not bring food nor go into the nest.

So the experts decided they need to intervene. They climbed to the nest (90 ft up) and they brought the babies down. They gave them fluids and fed them fish. After putting them back in the nest, they left fresh fish for them in the hopes that the parents would return and feed them.....but they didn't.

So the next day, they did it again.

They decided they would wait one more day and if the parents didn't return they would place the babies in other eagle nest along the river. Eagles will foster other babies. But after just one day, the parents returned and they resumed feeding and caring for their babies. We witnessed owls trying to take over the nest, feedings, wingercising and finally fledging. R1 and R2 both survived and now fly from the nest all day long. The parents are both teaching them how to fish from the James River. Our local newspaper has been keeping everyone up to date since the nest camera has been removed.

It's been fascinating watching all of this and I hope next year we will get to witness this again. You can check out pictures and videos of the parents and babies on their Facebook page. Just look up CCB Richmond Eagle Nest Camera.

They have lots of videos and pics up......

later.....