Yesterday, 23 March 2019, was a big day at the Hays bald eagle nest. At 8:48am Audubon of Western PA confirmed a pip in one of the three eggs. The egg hatched at 1:14pm.
As usual, the mother bald eagle supervised the hatching process while the father waited for her to tell him ‘all clear.’ What does a father eagle do while he’s waiting? Dana Nesiti of Eagles of Hays PA was on the trail yesterday morning and saw a behavior new to him. He wrote:
… the male grabbed a branch, dropped it while flying and then swooped down and caught it out of the air. Never saw that before.
Dana Nesiti, Eagles of Hays PA on Facebook
When the male got the ‘all clear’ he came to the nest to see the chick. Click here for ASWP’s video of the newly hatched chick with mother and father. (The chick is directly below the female.)
For now we will get only glimpses of the chick on camera while his parents keep him warm and incubate the remaining two eggs. But we’ll see him during feedings, as shown at top.
Watch the Hays bald eagle nest on the Audubon Society of Western PA Hays Nest Camera. Join the conversation on YouTube or Facebook.
Two eggs to go. Will both of them hatch? Wait and see.
UPDATE, 25 March 2019, 4pm: Second egg hatched at the Hays bald eagle nest.
(photo at top from Bald Eagles in Western PA – Audubon Society of Western PA on Facebook; in-flight photos by Dana Nesiti, Eagles of Hays PA on Facebook)
Dana observed a classic example of displacement behavior, when there are two conflicting, and hence unresolvable, drives. A human example might be when one loses an important Word document. On one side, there’s a drive to rewrite the document from scratch. On the other side, there’s a drive to say “the heck with it”. The conflict can lead to, among other things, the person kicking a trash can! In the male bald eagle instance, the drive to go to the nest probably conflicted with the drive to just stay away. Hence the bird behaved in a manner that “resolved”, albeit in a way inappropriate for either drive.