Decorah North Eagles and Blogs

May 8, 2023: What are we looking forward to this week?

May 8, 2023: HM's new slippers! HD2 is huddling beneath her on a rainy, wet morning in Decorah.

What are we looking forward to this week? We’ve got hatch at Great Spirit Bluff, nestling falcons at Alma, Great River Energy, and the Dubuque Courthouse, and some projected big nights on the Mississippi Flyway. Let’s break it down! Great Spirit Bluff Hatch has started at Great Spirit Bluff! Falcons normally begin full incubation after they lay their penultimate egg and it generally takes about thirty-three days from the onset of full incubation to the beginning of hatch. Savanna laid

May 2, 2023: NestFlix and News from Decorah and Decorah North!

May 1, 2023: DH2's fish pillow - a tasty white sucker.

We have your nestflix! In Decorah, DH2 explores self-feeding and shows us its tiny popping pinfeathers, HD makes a difficult fish delivery, and HM starts a rousing game of limbo with the very wonky stick. DH2 is getting big and it’s time to raise the crib rails! At Decorah North, we see some really interesting grackle behavior. Even if you don’t watch the whole video, I absolutely recommend checking out the song spread – it made me think of courting

Eaglet Growth and Development: Week Three

April 24, 2023: DH2. Look at that footpad!

We’re writing a series of blogs about the first few weeks of an eaglet’s life. An eaglet spends roughly 75 to 80 days in the nest. For about the first half, it grows and gains weight. For about the second half, it grows flight feathers and starts developing the skills it will need post-fledge. We will focus on week three in this blog. DH2 turns 18 days old today. During week two (seven to 14 days), its footpads and talons

April 18, 2023: A mega-movie raptor roll!

April 18, 2023: Like father, like DH2!

We’ve got your mega-movie raptor roll and some feeding observations! Still worried about DH2? As of yesterday, the little peaglet had been fed an incredible 84 times. HM did the most feedings (71 to HD’s 13) while HD provided most of the meals (38 to HM’s 2). As the first video shows, HM and DH2 have dialed feeding in! I also enjoyed the near miss with a PS (the hazards of being an eagle parent!), the lovely looks at DH2

Sweet Eagle Dreams!

April 14, 2023: Sweet Eaglet Dreams, DH2!

This blog on eagle sleep was first published in 2017. We’ve recorded adult eagles dreaming, but this is the first time we’ve captured it in an eaglet. In addition to what appears to be dreaming, look for preening, earholes (the dark holes behind and below DH2’s eyes) and the remnants of DH2’s egg tooth, which is already rubbing away.  Do Bald Eagles Dream? Do bald eagles dream? Some footage of DH2, the seven-day-old hatchling in Decorah, got us discussing this

Watching Bald Eagles

November 7, 2017: Dad Decorah

This is a flashback post first published on April 26 of 2012. I repost it every year when the eagles begin bringing suckerfish into the nest. For new followers: Bob (Anderson) founded the Raptor Resource Project and was its first director. You can learn more about him here: https://www.raptorresource.org/about-us/remembering-bob-anderson/ Bob took a turn operating the controls at the bald eagle camera this morning. He was fascinated by Dad, who brought in three suckers in one hour. Suckerfish are ‘rough’ fish:

Eaglet Growth and Development: Week One

April 11, 2023: DH2 at four days old!

We’re writing a series of blogs about the first few weeks of an eaglet’s life. An eaglet spends roughly 75 to 80 days in the nest. For about the first half, it grows and gains weight. For about the second half, it grows flight feathers and starts developing the skills it will need post-fledge. We will focus on week one in this blog. What can we expect in the first week following hatch? Like humans, a growing eaglet has developmental

Bald eagle tongues and beaks!

April 5, 2019: An eagle's tongue

We know that bird beaks are specialized for feeding and daily tasks. Birds of prey have strong, curved beaks with sharp edges to help them tear meat. Falcons specialize even further, adding a tomial tooth to help them kill prey. Dabbling ducks have tiny, comb-like structures on their beaks to strain small animals, insects, and plants from water and mud, while piscivorous ducks have saw-like structures to help them hold on to struggling fish. But what about bird tongues or,

March 28, 2023: What are we looking forward to this week?

March 27, 2023: HD rolls his eggs. We're glad to see that he's growing a new talon in.

What are we looking forward to this week? Eggs, eggs, eggs! We have four eggs at Dairyland Power’s Alma plant, at least one egg at Great River Energy’s Elk River campus, and eggy falcons at Minnesota Power’s Hibbard plant and three other sites that aren’t online. We don’t know how many eggs Mother Goose will lay, but she’s laid four so far and should be going into full incubation soon. We’re also looking forward to hatch in Decorah (our estimate

Peek inside a bald eagle egg: 24 days!

Development of an avian embryo

There are two eagle eggs in Decorah trout hatchery nest N1. DH1 is about 27 days old and DH2 is about 25 days old. What do they look like? Let’s take a peek!  What do embyronic eagles look they look like as they develop and grow inside their eggs? Dr. Peter Sharpe from the Institute for Wildlife Studies developed a table of bald eagle embryonic development based on work done by Hamburger and Hamilton (1951). While this animation uses a chicken

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