Leaving the Nest

I have been watching an eagle cam from a link that was posted on a paddling message board. The video feed is excellent quality, showing a nest in the upper Midwest with three chicks.

Normally eagles fledge at most two chicks. While this pair seems to have a historically higher percentage, raising three chicks is still unusual. That means at least one of these chicks may not survive. Even in a few days you can see which of the three chicks is the strongest, which seems least likely to make it. The adult seems to be feeding each chick based on how aggressively it competes for food.

Eagle cam link: http://www.ustream.tv/decoraheagles

But this morning offered a different view, when it seemed that the female sitting the nest was making a special effort to keep the smallest chick warm. Is this an instinctive act to help the chick survive, a kindness to one that she knows will not, or disinterested activity while larger fates decide whether this chick will live? I share the human impulse towards trying to alter fate, so it is hard for me to interpret the actions of the wild creature in this video.

This morning my neighbor's truck was filled with trees from last Christmas to be chipped, ours among them. His wife takes discarded trees from the alley each January and sets them up in their back yard to provide safe nesting for the sparrows and small song birds that return each year. The neighborhood has a resident Cooper's Hawk that also comes back, and who regards the fledglings as his personal buffet. The pile of trees in the truck means that these birds have fledged.

In the case of my neighbor's efforts, she is just evening the odds. The density of the ground cover and foliage in these city backyards can be lush, but still can't offer the same protection these small birds would find in thick, wild woodlands. For the eagles in the video, the urge to intervene is more difficult.