Nature is a Real Mother!

Over the past several years, I have delighted in watching the live cam of a bald eagle's nest in Shephardstown, WV. If you've never watched, here's the address: http://www.outdoorchannel.com/Conservation/EagleCam.aspx

The view is fantastic. And each year, there has been the incredible miracle of life as the mated pair Liberty and Belle have shown up in the middle of winter, made necessary repairs on their nest, produced an egg, and spent days sitting on it through all kinds of horrible weather until out hatched a baby eaglet. And then the real work would begin of constantly finding food to feed the baby and sitting on and/or watching over the baby until it was old enough to fly off and start life on its own. Its absolutely grueling work.

Well, at least that's how its gone until last year. First, there were two eggs produced that harsh snowstorms destroyed. Hey, beaks are good for lots of things, but shoveling snow isn't one of them. A third egg was laid on Valentine's Day. And despite continued hard weather, this one survived. A totally cute baby hatched out.

But there wasn't to be a happy ending last summer. Just a few weeks after the baby eagle hatched, a young female eagle was seen hanging out around the nest. Then the male eagle, Liberty, disappeared for a few days and was seen flying around with the new gal. He eventually came back to the nest, but so did the intruder female. And Liberty (or Lib as he was more frequently referred to in the discussion forums) was no longer feeding the eaglet. Left on her own, Belle could not both feed the eaglet and defend it.

Never a particularly strong baby, the eaglet suffered from lack of food. Finally, the intruder female killed the baby and threw it out of the nest. Everyone I knew who had been monitoring the nest was devastated. It was a horrible ending to what had previously been such a wonderful and life-affirming experience. So that was it. The adults abandoned the nest. I quit watching and bided my time for the new season to begin.

And so it was that yesterday I tuned in again. It had taken me a few days to convince myself that I really wanted to watch again, knowing that another disaster was always a possibility. I knew I was a bit late checking in, so I wasn't terribly surprised to find the nest had been refurbished and was ready to go. What I wasn't prepared for was the chatter on the discussion forums. For now, instead of Lib and Belle, they were referring to Belle and Shep. I did a search of the forums. It took a bit of time to find the references, but there they were--Liberty had been found dead early last summer near the nest. The cause was unknown.

And its possible this situation could get even worse. Belle is coming to the nest and she has her new mate. But there is still a young female who is coming around and being a real nuisance. I keep thinking about all those people who watch "reality" TV. Those people have absolutely no clue what reality is.