Hopes that white-tailed eagle pair's nesting can be caught on camera

Online camera would record nesting for the first time in Finland

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There is excitement among Finnish ornithologists that this spring and summer we could see the nesting of a pair of white-tailed eagles (Haliaeetus albicilla, also known as the erne or sea eagle) for the first time live on camera, relayed to the Net.
      A young pair of the majestic birds has spent the entire winter in a "Net-nest" belonging to some ospreys, from which people were able to watch the ospreys' nesting from start to finish in 2006.
     
The pair of eagles have been seen on camera on the nest daily, and have also been witnessed mating.
      The birds were at the same nest - in Nauvo in the Archipelago Sea - last spring, building a nest as if it were their own.
      However, before the ospreys returned from their winter migration the eagles reduced the number of their visits, and eventually it was the ospreys who occupied the nest.
      It is thought possible that last year's residence was more of a drill, and now birdwatchers are wondering what will happen if the two birds decide to occupy the nest in earnest, and the ospreys subsequently return to discover their home has been taken over.
     
White-tailed eagles are more retiring birds than ospreys, and hence it has not hitherto been possible to follow their nesting at close range on more than one occasion, in Norway.
      Thus far, they have shown no qualms about the presence of a camera no more than a metre from where they are sitting - it may be they believe that if the place was safe enough for the ospreys, it cannot hold much threat to them.
      Last year Finns and others around the world saw dramatic live images from another nesting site of an altercation between nesting ospreys and a marauding white-tailed eagle, which led to the death of an osprey chick.
     
The link below directs to a webcam of the nesting site in Nauvo.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Northern webcam records white-tailed eagle attacking osprey nest (5.8.2008)

Links:
  White-tailed Eagle (Wikipedia)
  Osprey webcam, Nauvo

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