Update: Video of a Friday morning feeding on the eagle cam shows a second eaglet has hatched
One of three eggs has hatched to a pair of bald eagles in Sidney in front of a vast Internet audience.
No one seemed happier at the Wednesday hatching than the man who installed cameras on bald-eagle nests at Sidney, Hornby Island and Delta.
"Our Sidney eagles have hatched!" said biologist David Hancock, the 71-year-old founder of the website hancockwildlifechannel.org.
Hancock was a 14-year-old falconer in Saanichton when the Fish and Wildlife branch brought him a sick eagle to rehabilitate. Since then, he's been hooked on the species.
"Eagles are equally as impressive today even though I've spent a lifetime studying them," Hancock said. "Looking at them, particularly through these cameras, gives one such an incredible insight that you can't see any other way."
The hatching is the first of the year at Hancock's nests. Another pair of bald eagles on Hornby has two eggs due to hatch April 26.
A nest in Delta under the eye of Hancock's cameras demonstrates, however, the truth of the old saying about not counting birds before they hatch.
The 35-day incubation period has come and gone, and the eggs have not hatched.
"They haven't done something right," said Hancock. "I suspect they didn't mate effectively and the eggs didn't get fertilized."
Last year, the Sidney pair hatched three young and raised them successfully, said Hancock. This year, the second hatching is expected today and the third on Monday.
It's one thing to hatch three eggs but a "rarity" to raise them to fledge, said Hancock.
City nests often produce three young, which are fed from road-kills and trash. "They hunt the roads first thing in the morning and pick 'em up."
On the web:
hancockwildlifechannel.org
