Bald eagles go from endangered species to reality stars
DECORAH, Iowa — Raise your hand if you thought birds would become online reality show stars.
Not even raptor researcher Bob Anderson did, and he planted a video camera near a bald eagle nest in 2008 here that started it all.
Six years later, live streams from hundreds of bird nest cams are available online, launched by public agencies, non-profits and private companies, inspired by the famous Iowa eagles and their 300 million viewers on Ustream since 2010.
"I call them copy cams. Everybody wants to jump on our coattails and copy us," Anderson said. "And everybody comes to us for assistance. What we do is walk the higher road and help them."
It's not a cut-throat competition for online eyeballs, he said.
"It's all good," Anderson said. "It makes people feel good."
Spring is prime viewing season as birds nest, lay eggs and tend their young, all before curious onlookers worldwide who watch them on screens. The live feeds were launched less for hard scientific research than for conservation advocacy, entertainment and public relations.
But they have contributed new information, surprising even scientists.
Now you can watch a bluebird in a nest box in Soddy Daisy, Tenn., courtesy of a local ice cream shop; or a great tit nesting in Dresden, Germany; or see great blue herons in New York, via the experts at Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
Aluminum manufacturer Alcoa in Davenport, Iowa, joined the nest cam frenzy in 2011, streaming its live video of bald eagles that viewers named Liberty and Justice. It helps show that the environment and sustainability are key values to the company, said John Riches, Alcoa's public affairs manager.
"We found we had a pair of eagles nesting on our property. Instead of keeping it to ourselves, we thought we would share it with a small number of people," he said. "But a huge number found them. We are up to 23 million since we put it on.
"It costs us thousands of dollars a year, but when you think how many people get to our website, it's worth it."
The road to reality TV
American bald eagles were the perfect stars to lead this online phenomena.
As recently as 40 years ago, they were in danger of extinction throughout North America because of habitat destruction and the insecticide DDT, which made eagles' eggs fragile. Today the iconic symbol of freedom and strength has made such a comeback that they have also become the symbol of species restoration.
Anderson didn't tag them as likely Internet stars. In fact, 20 years ago he placed some of his first rudimentary cameras on the nest of peregrine falcons in the Twin Cities.
"We put it over the Internet, a single image updated every few minutes, and we were immediately contacted by a Seattle teacher," he said. "I saw the potential immediately."
What followed years later has become bird-watching lore.
That first video camera in 2008 produced rarely seen footage of nesting bald eagles here for the public television show Nature, and it gave him an idea to make the feed available on the Internet through a private business the following year.
One hundred thousand people viewed the eagles in the nest, laying and tending eggs, watching them hatch, grow and eventually fly from the nest. When Anderson put it on a relatively new streaming service called Ustream the following year, it became a worldwide sensation.
Four years later, people are still watching — and visiting Decorah from all over the world to see them. Three new eaglets hatched earlier this month to the delight of thousands simultaneously viewing it online.
"Some time after logging on they become your eagles," Anderson said. "There is a sense of ownership. I hear people say, "I was watching my eagles.' "
What their popularity also did was help propel the growth of a little 2007 startup company called Ustream into the world's largest live video platform, said Joellen Ferrer, Ustream's director of communications. The Decorah eagles are the most-viewed channel ever on Ustream.
"It's really helped with the brand awareness. It opened the door for the technology for the every-day consumer," she said. "I know we've had thousands of bird cams since then; there are 30 web cams here on eagles on our site, much of it spurred on by the popularity of the Decorah eagles."
Now the private company has clients as large as the Discovery channel and as small as a novice with a smart phone and an application to live stream a nearby nesting bird or wild animal, she said.
No permission required
In fact, anyone can put a video camera on a nest, said Drew Becker of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Moline, Ill. No permits are required, regardless of species, unless it negatively affects nesting birds.
In some instances cameras break and operators want to repair them in the middle of breeding season, but that is not allowed without a permit.
Even scientists see it as less an intrusion on nature than a benefit to it.
"It's the technology of the future that gives us insights, allows us to see things you just can't see otherwise. For biologists, it has been a watershed moment," said Pat Schlarbaum of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, who has worked with downtown Des Moines' American Enterprise Group to film nesting peregrine falcons for several years.
"We're learning things about eagles no one realized. How active they are at night. How many raccoons are out there trying to catch them in a weak moment," he said.
The live footage shows subtle things that still photography can't pick up, like how a female bald eagle ever so gently can curl her talons around an egg to move it, or supply a unique vantage point to show that the female places the eggs in a triangle pattern, while the male puts them in a straight line.
Yet some thought the Decorah eagles built a new nest 350 feet away from the original near a trout hatchery because of human interference. It's common behavior even though the eagles were offline for a year because of it.
"Is it an ethical intrusion? Studies have shown it does not affect their behavior," Schlarbaum said.
Look no further than the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, a nonprofit bird research and conservation organization affiliated with Cornell University, to find a nest cam advocate.
"I can write letters and tell people how cool birds are. But the birds are so much better at it," said Charles Eldermire, who heads the lab's bird cam projects that today feature six cams, including owls, hawks, herons, osprey and albatross. "People only conserve what they know and care about."
Beyond conservation advocacy, he found that "bona fide new things have been discovered," such as how great horned owls bothered a blue heron nest five times in one night or how hawks changed their diets from chipmunks to snakes based on the amount of snowfall.
What's cool is that expert moderators and scientists are watching the same thing as average citizens, up to 8 million alone viewing the red-tailed hawk and blue heron nests, he said. Sometimes untrained viewers will see things in the middle of the night that is new information to researchers, who didn't previously have the benefit of hundreds of thousands of eyeballs all hours of the day over several years.
Live chat 24/7
In Decorah, Anderson directs the nonprofit Raptor Resource Project which uses a team of volunteer chat moderators on the video eagle feed all hours of the day, many with incredible patience answering the same question: Is that mom or dad?
They've guided corporations and public agencies such as the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources on how to launch cams, and added 31 cams of their own, hovering over a variety of species from Wisconsin to California and another popular eagle cam on the nearby Mississippi River, where they found eagles follow the migration patterns of one fish soon after snow melt. They've even satellite tracked the migration of eagle D1 to the Arctic.
While advertising pays for the bandwidth required to feed footage to the world, Anderson says they need to stop adding more. There just isn't enough time to keep them all going.
"It clearly has created a new interest," Anderson said. "It's daring. It's raw. It's unedited. Just the other day I saw the male bring a flopping live trout back to the nest. The female walked over and bit off its head. The other day, the female was covered in 10 inches of snow.
"These are real things. It's real life."
5 bald eagle cams worth watching
In addition to the original eagle cam in Decorah, Iowa, other bird lovers have launched their own live streaming video feeds of bald eagles' nests. Here are five from across the USA:
The rules for eagle cams
What are the federal laws regarding eagles? Both bald eagles, golden eagles and their nests are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. Both laws prohibit "take" and possession of eagles, their parts, nests, and eggs. Under the Eagle Act, "take" includes disturbance.
What is a disturbance? "Disturb" means "to agitate or bother a bald or golden eagle to a degree that causes, or is likely to cause, based on the best scientific information available," injury to an eagle, a decrease in its productivity or nest abandonment by substantially interfering with normal breeding, feeding, or sheltering behavior.
Is a permit is required? If installed and maintained following sound protocols, nest cameras will not result in bald eagle disturbance and no permit is required. The most critical factor is that the camera be installed outside the breeding season when the nest is inactive. Installation or maintenance of the camera during the nest season may result in a violation of the Eagle Act by disturbing the eagles. The bald eagle breeding season can begin several months before egg laying, and nest building and courtship is an important part of the breeding season.
Source: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service