Decorah Eagles and Blogs

January 10, 2025: The Week in Bald Eagles!

January 9, 2025: DNF caught a nice trout for breakfast - https://youtu.be/X2GebRWdrYo?si=6g5qKAufUzY11AcH. While Bald Eagles eat a wide variety of food, their favorite thing is fish! Although the species change, fish make up from 68 to 88% of meals at our nests. We tend to see whatever is most common and easiest to catch: trout and sucker at the North nest and sucker, carp, and trout at Fort St. Vrain. We're still working on fish ID in Trempealeau, but we've seen gar come into the nest, reflecting its location on the Mississippi River. To learn more about what our eagles eat, follow this link: https://www.raptorresource.org/tag/menu/

Happy Fri-yay, everyone! Welcome to the week in Bald Eagles! 🦅 This week, the Norths perfected their nestorations, ramped up their courtship – albeit in a very eagle way – and enjoyed some trout tartare, the Fort St. Vrain Eagles shoveled snow and fed themselves and the local magpies, the Trempealeau Eagles showed off their magnificent river views, and HM and HD hosted some visitors. Is your egg clock ticking yet? If the Decorah North and Fort St. Vrain Eagles

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Eagle Eyes!

January 6, 2025: DNF's nictitating eyelid. This translucent third eyelid sweeps in from the side to moisten and protect her eye without obscuring her vision. More on eagle eyes here: https://www.raptorresource.org/2025/01/10/eagle-eyes-2/

Has anyone ever called you eagle-eyed? Relative to humans, bald eagles have larger, sharper eyes that see further, collect more details, and produce stereoscopic vision to greatly improve depth perception. A bald eagle’s visual acuity begins with its eye size and shape. Mr. North’s somewhat tubular eyes occupy over 50% of the volume of his skull, as compared with less than 5% in us spherically-eyed human types.  He can voluntarily adjust the curvature of his large cornea and lens (we’re

Read more Decorah Eagles, Decorah North Eagles, News

December 11, 2024: It’s an Eagle-Palooza!

December 11, 2024: A large gathering of eagles in Decorah

Welcome to the Eagle-Palooza! But where did all those eagles come from? Our camera operators reported three eagles this morning: HM, HD, and an unknown adult. All three were seen perched together in a tree to the north of the hatchery – a little unusual, but nothing we haven’t seen before…at least until about 1:50PM this afternoon, when 35 or so of their best friends showed up! David Kester went down to the hatchery to check things out. He reported

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How do eagles stay warm in cold weather?

January 23, 2023: HD sports eye-cicles on a frosty morning in Decorah. An icy fog left everything coated with frost

Each species experiences the world differently and eagles have capacities that are far different from ours. How do Bald Eagles survive an Iowa winter without adaptive clothing and central heat? A cold January morning coated our eagles in frost and left watchers wondering how Bald Eagles survive an Iowa winter. In general, wintering animals – including humans – need to retain body heat, stay dry, and take in enough calories to support winter’s increased energy demands. We humans put on

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When will our eagles lay eggs?

March 20, 2023: HM and her eggs

When will the Decorah and Decorah North eagles begin laying eggs? While nest timing can very from region to region (Florida, for example, is quite different from Iowa), mark your calendars as follows! Eagles in Florida are beginning to lay eggs. Does Mr. and Mrs. T’s recent copulation mean that we’ll soon see eggs there as well? It does not! Bald eagles have been documented copulating ten months of the year, but in the Upper Midwest and Colorado, they don’t

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Birds and Nest-Building

A blackbird's cup nest

When I say ‘bird’s nest’, you know the type of nest I’m talking about, right? It could be a bald eagle’s stick platform high up in the branches of a tree. Or perhaps a peregrine falcon’s scrape in dirt, sand, or gravel on a shallow cliff ledge. Or maybe the burrows that bank swallows and belted kingfishers excavate in dirt, the cavity nests that woodpeckers excavate in dead wood, or the woven nests that orioles and weavers build. When I

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August 26, 2024: A quick update from all around our nests!

August 25, 2024: A juvenile Bald Eagle near the North Nest! Is it DN17 or DN18 making a last trip home before dispersing? It didn't get close enough for us to tell

We’ve got a quick update from all around our nests! We’ve seen DNF and a juvenile – DN17 or DN18, perhaps? – around the Valley of the Norths, although neither DNF nor Mr. North have visited the nest we built for them yet. We’re not too worried about it, since the Norths don’t typically begin nestorations until October. But we do wish the mice hadn’t taken our housewarming gifts…those trout weren’t for you, mice! Given the amount of free food

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July 30, 2024: Last Decorah North Chat of the 2023/2024 Season and NestFlix!

July 26, 2024: HM on the Y-Branch.

Even with the North nest falling, it was a great year for Norths! Come join us for the last chat of the 2023/2024 season on Friday, August 2, from 3:30 to 5PM: https://www.raptorresource.org/birdcams/decorah-north-nest/. We’ll be celebrating DN17 and DN18, reliving the year, and chatting about our plans! While the Norths and Hatchery Eagles are in the ebb of their year, we’re still seeing both couples in and around their nesting areas, including a thrilling visit by HD on July 26.

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May 11, 2024: Day Trip to Decorah!

May 11, 2024: Mom feeding D40

Story and photos by Robin Brumm Saturday’s weather was supposed to be perfect, so guess where I went? You guessed it, I went to Decorah to see Mom and DM2. I also wanted to see if I could confirm how many eaglets were in the nest. So I packed up my stuff Saturday morning, and headed to Decorah. When I got to the nest, I noticed one parent in the nest and the other parent on the broken branch where

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May 5, 2024: Decorah Day Trip

DM2 and eaglets

Story and photos by Robin Brumm I finally had a weekend that cooperated with a nice day, so I headed to Decorah. I was anxious to see if I could see any eaglets at N4, Mom and DM2’s nest. If there are eaglets, they would be about 2 weeks younger than the eaglets at DNN. I was a little on edge since Mom and DM2 haven’t had any eaglets the last two years, so as I walked down the trail

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