DNF and Mr. North rang in the New Year with plenty of nestorations and visits from a screech owl and – we think! – another eagle. We saw stick discussions, carpet laying, and plenty of courtship activity. The North nest is still alive – and sticking! – in 2025!
What are we looking forward to this week? Nestorations will continue, perhaps with an increased focus on the nestbowl and soft materials. It’s also likely we’ll see or hear more copulation activity, although that typically picks up as we get closer to egg-laying season – around mid-February at the North nest. Keep your eyes and ears peeled for owls, who might be nest shopping or hunting. The work we did below the nest opened up a lot of brushy area, which improved hunting for winged predators before and after dark!
Thanks so much to all of our awesome camera operators and video makers for finding such special moments, and to all of you for watching, sharing, learning, and especially for caring. We’re very excited to see what happens this year! Watch live: https://www.raptorresource.org/birdcams/decorah-north-nest/.
Decorah North Eagles
January 2, 2025: A screech owl hunts near the north nest
January 2, 2025: Screech Owl Visitor – https://youtu.be/PuXKRaDeLWo?si=ckUAW_fOTCB0llBP. Enjoy the screech owl all the way through or go to 4:55 as it plunges down, completely silent, to catch something in the grass. We don’t hear it in this video, but here’s a link to screech owl calls for anyone who is curious: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Eastern_Screech-Owl/sounds.
January 2, 2025: North Nestorations!
December 31, 2024: Stick tango, nest work getting serious – https://youtu.be/2EmMGCNSk_o?si=tt0JIkL358ePEuap. This video gives us several different views of DNF and Mr. North as they work on their nest. Several of you have asked what will happen if the reach the top of our bionic limb. I think the tree will fall before the limb fails, so that isn’t a concern for me. Reaching the top would also limit the weight, since at some point it wouldn’t be possible to heap the nest any higher. We’re curious to see how high they manage to build this year, but we’re not concerned about the nest or the tree.
The Raptor Resource Project