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GOOD MORNING WHITE ROCK FRIENDS!

Hello David, Thank you so much for coming by and giving us your perspective on this most unusual, interesting, albeit very disappointing season.

Boundary Bay Weather

Current Temperature: 4.0°c/39.2°f - Wind: NE@6kmh

Forecast: Mainly sunny. High 14°c/57.2°f.

8:01a - No one home save our little egg.



:hello:Jo, nightowl, Sue, Jean & DianaOly.

BB in a bit.

9:48a - One of our eagles landed in the attic trilling and calling.

Good Morning WR Friends
9:59am No activity at the nest...just one lone egg

:hello: Annie, Jean, Sue, Tina, Ducky, Dan, Terry, KC6KCS, Dianaoly & all I missed
David for your posts....definitely does put it all into perspective

10:49-:53a - Saw the shadow of an eagle and then trills, movement and calls from
the cam branch.

11:02a - Our eagle on the cam branch flew out after another adult.



:hello: Jo.

More Thoughts on Embryonic Egg Development

Embryonic development initiates when the temperature of the eggs gets to a certain level -- approaching the standard temp of about 99.5º F or 37.5º C The following url give a wondrous visual opportunity to follow the development in a chicken egg -- that would hatch in 21 days, not the 35 days of the eagle:

http://www.thepoultrysite.com/articles/ ... day-by-day

From viewing that brief look at the eagle lifting up and swallowing the egg content I feel the content had about 10 - 12 days of development -- and then rotting deterioration. This would equate it to about the 6 - 8 days of the chicken embryo. My reasoning for this is: a) An infertile egg simply dries up in the shell under the heat of the incubating birds. b) Usually the infertile egg does not go bad or look rotten in this period of time. c) It is the fertile egg, the one undergoing cell division, bringing in oxygen and germs from the outside through the pores that sucks in bacteria that can take over and rot the egg once the embryo dies and is not growing. So what I believe I saw on the video was a fertile egg that had initiated development but died. The dead embryo then starts to be attacked by bacteria and deteriorates. What we saw the female take out of the broken shell appeared to me to have some "degraded" substance more like a dead embryo than an infertile yolk.

Having myself incubated thousands of eggs of perhaps 200 species of birds, these eagle parents were not doing what was required of them -- or what an aviculturist would do to artificially incubate them. These parents had not yet learned the right lessons -- or more discouragingly -- may have lost those talents.

Here is the url to the egg depredation video by the sub-adult eagle -- and Ma's perturbed reaction. ????

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-N8rhVjChk

So what will happen with the last egg -- still there Wednesday morning? Well I would have said it would almost certainly be soon predated by a raven or crow -- now I have to add in "or eaten by an egg-eating bald eagle" -- something I had not seen before. These cams sure show up some unexpected behaviors. It is not long since we saw the Redding, California/Turtle Bay intruder land on the nest and in moments bend down and pull the head of the newly hatched chick and swallow it.

Are these observations more normal than we had thought before our prying cams gave us these intimate views or are behaviors changing? In the expanded populations of eagles in the recent years are we witnessing ways of eliminating competition, a version of the lion pride owner destroying the earlier pride owner's offspring? Doubtful but possible. Are we witnessing just the stress from competition for food? We have more eagles and perhaps the seasonal food supplies are shifting and eating scraps or young from someone else's nest is simply fair game for a good dinner.

From Depression to Optomism!

Egyptian vultures specialize in eating eggs, particularly using stones to break open Ostrich eggs. Are we seeing a throwback to old DNA patterns in our bald eagles? Or are some eagles simply showing that versatility that typifies a very successful predator/scavenger. If a bird has the ability to identify so many different sources of food, from hunting huge to tiny mammals, birds, reptiles or fish and even insects and amphibians and then switching to eating carrion shapes and sizes barely differentiable as "protein", perhaps we have a super survivor in the making - a new crow, raccoon, a rat -- my goodness, perhaps eagles are evolving to replace us! So something is good in all this!

David Hancock

11:45am Still no activity on the nest...thanks again David for an interesting read.

11:50 a.m.: Zoomer found a cute li'l juvie perched by the water.

Thank You David! This is really very, very interesting. I think we all have been/are quite interested in
the subject of the eggs. Much appreciated!


Thank you Sue for catching the pretty Juvie.

for a while...12:06p.