Something very sad happened to me recently. The great horned
owl family that I have been watching obsessively since February on the Savannah Owls bird cam have now left the nest. First I watched the parents settle into
the nest. Then I watched the mother sit patiently on her two eggs for endless
days, as the wind and snow blew on her, and I watched the father bring in food
or sit on the eggs so the mother could have a break. The eggs hatched, and I got
to watch two of the most ugly-cute baby birds on earth grow up, with their
ghostly white feathers and their even spookier wide, staring eyes. I shuddered
as the dead animals piled up in the nest - mice, rats, squirrels, egrets, and
other unidentified birds - and the babies slowly learned to pull chunks of dead
flesh off the bone and feed themselves. I watched with dread as the parents spent
less and less time on the nest and the owlets began to climb the branches of
the tree around the nest, flexing and flapping their developing wings. And
then, suddenly, the sad days came, as each of the owlets disappeared from sight.
For a couple of days, the mother would come back to the nest with food, and
sometimes be able to call the owlets back, but for the last two days there has
been nothing.
I know they’re out there in the world together, and that the
parents will continue to guide and protect the owlets for months until they can
hunt successfully on their own and stake out their own territories. But I won’t see all of that happen from here on out, and it feels like the same kind of loss I experienced
when six seasons of Downton Abbey
came to an end and I no longer had those “friends” in my life.
Bird cams are a revolutionary technology growing in
popularity. They bring us into the most intimate sphere of the bird world. We
admire the birds for their hard work, tenacity, and long hours of caring for
offspring. We see how helpless the babies are and how quickly they develop. We
even give them names. The eagle family featured on the Washington, D.C., eagle cam are “Mr. President” and “The First Lady”.
(Next year will they be the Clintons? The Trumps? The Cruzes? The Sanderses?
Only time will tell!)
Bird cams also make us face the horrible realities of
nature: that somebody has to die in order for somebody else to live, or that
sometimes somebody dies for no good reason at all. Whole families and offices full
of people cheered as the bald eaglets hatched in Hanover, Pennsylvania,
and then expressed horror as one died in the nest, for no clear reason. The
Washington, D.C., eagle cam website even posts the following warning:
“This is a wild eagle nest and
anything can happen. While we hope that these two healthy juvenile eagles will
end up fledging from the nest this summer, things like sibling rivalry,
predators, and natural disaster can affect this eagle family and may be
difficult to watch.”
Like reality television, the bird cam industry is expanding.
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology alone hosts 15 cameras on a variety of species, from
hummingbirds in West Texas to an albatross nest in Hawaii. Daily moments on the
cams are tweeted, shared on Facebook, and captured in videos for Youtube. As
with all other internet and social media phenomena, they are changing us and
our experiences of life. For example, the intimacy of the camera now makes the nests in my
yard seem a little dull. I can’t stand next to the Leyland cypress and peer
into the chipping sparrow nest several hours a day without running the poor,
scared little things off and without developing leg cramps from standing on a ladder. A couple of weeks ago I was at the National
Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown, WV, looking through binoculars
at a bald eagle nest that I watch online here, and it was a real letdown to see
it in person, from far away, with an obstructed view because of the tree
branches. Sitting in my office, staring at my computer suddenly seemed the more
“real” way to interact with nature. Funny, huh? The internet as the best and
most real way to celebrate nature.
Today I went to the Savannah Owls cam website, desperately hoping that maybe the camera would catch one of the owlets back in the nest for
a daytime sleep and I could smile at how much he has grown in the last couple
of days. To my surprise, there was a pair of ospreys on the nest instead. I am
watching them now as they check out the nest and call to each other. Will they
nest there? Will they successfully raise a family? Will the owls return? Will
the owls kill and eat the osprey chicks after I have fallen in love with them? As
with any soap opera cliffhanger, I will definitely have to tune in tomorrow and
find out more.
