When are these damn birds going to hatch?!
I’ve spent the last two days with a live stream of an eagle’s nest on my second screen at work. I’m not the only one – there are more than 20,000 viewers right now.
Harriet (mama bird) and M15 (daddy bird) have been taking turns sitting on the nest. They’re keeping watch over two eggs, which should hatch any time now (hopefully not on my lunch break).
Every time there’s movement, I freak out. When the cam zooms in on those eggs, I look for cracks. Nothing yet.
Harriet laid the eggs on Nov. 22 and Nov. 25. Egg No. 1 should hatch any time now. Egg No. 2 has a couple of days to go. The average incubation period is 35 days.
The nest is built in a Slash Pine tree on the Dick Pritchett Real Estate property in Fort Myers. The Southwest Florida Eagle cam – with three angles of the nest – was launched in October 2012.
For the last several years, viewers watched Harriet and her former lover, Ozzie, welcome babies into the world. They’d called the nest home since 2006. Ozzie died last year.
Now Harriet is with M15. That’s short for Male 2015 – clever. I might start using that naming convention, too.
This is their second mating season.
So grab some popcorn. Pull up the live stream. And, wait.
