Tag Archives: Eggs

Do bald eagles delay incubation?

February 14, 2019: FSV

This blog was first published on Tuesday, March 29, 2016. It has been updated to reflect new knowledge and events. Do bald eagles delay incubation? It wasn’t an a question we’ve thought about much, since bald eagles in Iowa usually lay eggs in temperatures under – sometimes well under – freezing! However, 2016 was quite a bit warmer, and the eagles in Decorah and Fort St. Vrain seemed to spend more time off the first two eggs than we are used

Nest chronology: Egg timing!

Second egg for the Decorah Eagles!

This blog discusses the correlation between new mates, temperature, humidity, and egg-timing.  We’ve been getting questions about egg timing. Why did Mom and Dad lay eggs later in 2018? Overall, avian egg-timing in the temperate zone is heavily regulated by the light cycle. As the days begin to lengthen, birds’ gonads swell and produce sex hormones. Around the end of January, our bald eagle pairs switch from infrequent copulation to frequent, highly enthusiastic copulation, putting us on notice for egg

When will our eagles lay eggs? Bald eagle breeding in Iowa and Florida

Daylight Length Graph from Fort Meyers Florida

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! In the nests we watch in Iowa and Colorado, bonding and copulating behaviors become more pronounced and frequent after the winter solstice. Female eagles begin laying eggs 5-10 days after productive copulation begins. This usually happens in mid-February at the Decorah and Fort St. Vrain nests. In

Will Mom Lay Eggs? When Will Mom Lay Eggs? Your Questions, Answered!

Decorah Mom and the first egg of 2017

We’re getting a lot of questions about Mom Decorah and eggs. When will she lay eggs? Will she lay three eggs again? We don’t want to count Mom’s eggs before she lays them, but we have some answers (and some speculation) to your questions! Will a new mate equal later eggs? Let’s start by taking a look at Mom’s egg laying history… As the table above shows, Mom’s first egg (that we have a date for, since she laid eggs

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