A few years back I remember it was quite a phenomenon when you could watch anything “live” and “streaming” on the web, and on one occasion I heard about an eagle’s nest where a camera had been placed close enough so that you could see the eggs and watch them hatch.

I love birds. I’m not a birder, but I love seeing different ones and looking in my little book to identify them. I love their calls and their colours and I especially love eagles. When I’m on the ferry from Swartz Bay to Tswwassen and it heads through Active Pass, a kind of narrow pass between two islands half way through the trip, I look for eagles sitting in the tall trees along the pass. Sometimes they’re circling high above on a sunny day, catching the updrafts and soaring.

The year that I discovered the eagle camera, unfortunately, none of the eaglets hatched. Hundreds of people were watching and some of them were posting on a forum, so sure that they had seen an eaglet, but it was not meant to be. This year a friend who lives in Iowa, sent me a link to the Hancock Wildlife page which is only a few miles away from where I live, in Sidney, BC. I was again mesmerized as the little white eggs turned to fluffy, grey eaglets. Three of them! It’s rather unusual to have three eggs hatch, usually there are only two and often one of the two eaglets becomes rather dominant and the second often dies as a result.

But this year there are three. The above video was taken as the parent eagles returned to repair the nest before the arrival of their eggs back in February.

Spring is a reminder of renewal, rebirth, hope, and all good things. As much as I would love to live in a place that is warm all year ’round, I would miss the feeling of newness that comes with the return of spring. Just listening to the birds on the Hancock Wildlife website makes me feel better about everything.

Happy Spring 🙂
IJ