Sunday, April 22, 2007

Storms can wreak havoc upon wild critters.

2 eagle chicks on webcam fail to survive nor'easter
The nor’easter that battered the East Coast this week has claimed the lives of two eagle chicks that hatched just days before the storm hit.

We’ve got a couple of bald eagle nests around here and one or two have hatchlings in them from around April 10th. They’ll be under parental care for a month or so longer before they’re ready to try their wings. These little guys in Maine never had much of a chance.
"The nest is exposed to the northeast, so it was not protected at all from this storm," Goodale said Friday. "They just got hammered."

The storm came at the worst possible time for the young chicks, during the first week of their lives, he said. With just light downy feathers and no way to keep themselves warm, they likely got wet and cold and died of hypothermia, he said.

The adult eagles did everything they could to protect the chicks, Goodale said.

"They stayed with them through the storm," he said. "They did nest switches and didn’t leave the chicks for a moment. They hung right in there. It was just too much all together"

1 comment:

GUYK said...

yep.Mother Nature can be a cruel mistress..but it will all even out and maybe next year there will be more eggs than before