Mother Nature can be a real bitch. Ode to an eaglet.

Hanover Eagles eaglet survived out of the shell for less than 48 hours….

I posted the below on the HDOnTap‘s Eagle Cam comment string…..

oooohhhhh mommy bird….. I hadn’t checked in today and then was watching the news…… breaks my heart, so sad. Nature can be a real bitch sometimes. I was watching yesterday and it was so great watching the little one getting fed etc and peeping so loudly. I sure hope the second egg makes it. The eagles are still being good parents tending to the egg, etc. This is one of the crappy parts of being able to WATCH all of this LIVE – it’s so great, but we become attached and then it can so easily go wrong. All the work that goes into prepping the nest and then all the incubating and the little devil managed to make it through his shell and then…..
If love could’ve saved you, you would have lived forever or at least as long as majestic eagles live xo
fingers so damn crossed for egg number 2, hoping it wasn’t really egg number one

I was crying from the moment I heard the news report and the whole time I typed. While I know, understand and accept it’s nature and things happen – that doesn’t stop the emotional connection from forming and the sadness at this loss. I never in my lifetime thought I’d see Bald Eagles flying over me in PA, but about 3-4 years ago our county had it’s first nest! And we saw them through a scope one sitting one the nest and one in the “sentinel” tree beside. Since then we’ve seen them sporadically and this late winter, I actually got to see a pair in an aerial mating dance only about a mile from our house – I followed them down the road for a mile or two as then spiraled and danced low over the fields….. it was AMAZING – a true my pants moment. And then THIS! this LIVE feed of a nest – how awesome. Between the Hanover Eagles and the GHOs in Georgia nest watching over the last two years has been addictive. And I can tell from the comments here and on FB pages, it’s not just me. smile emoticon lol I even got my husband to drive over to Hanover one Sunday to sit in the cold for a couple hours hoping to see and eagle – we could see the nest but never got to see one in flight over the lake. I was planning AM planning to get him to go back when the other egg hatches (fingers so crossed) I figure there will be lots of action when they have to fish for baby food.

Part of what is so difficult is not knowing what happened? He was fine and then …… he wasn’t. And oh! the commenters have gone totally off the fucking chain. Sometimes it’s too much to even read. I scroll through to see if there’s any news or updates. But with this eaglets death people have turned on one another and the speculating and the blaming… Some were blaming the female eagle for not feeding the eaglet others were blaming the one parent for trying to move a stick in the nest and hitting the eaglet in the head several times….. Before the egg even hatched so many were “oh, it’s been too long it’s not going to hatch.”  Now everyone is faulting the eagles for not sitting on the egg right now – it’s almost 80 outside. Or there’s the “they’ve given up and left the nest.”  Maybe they have, the egg which remains may actually have been the first laid in which case it’s doubtful we’ll have a hatch.  😦  which is so sad.  Mostly for the eagles. There have been a number of eagle deaths along the eastern seaboard – I haven’t heard why but it’s suspected that it’s some type of poisoning, perhaps not even purposeful but something which the eagles ate was poisoned. Just makes this loss even sadder.

And then there was one frequent poster, I wanted to “YELL” at her anyway, as she kept posting the same trite phase to anyone who posted a theory or question about why the eaglet died.  “We’ll never know why the eaglet died.” Like just shut-up you don’t have to answer every person, they’ll figure it out. But she posted a video of the last nite the eagle sat on the egg and the eaglet who was already gone by then…. which was fine until she also showed where the one parent returned to the nest and moved the dead eaglet to the edge of the nest and then apparently began to eat some of it. Good lord. We all had been warned that this was a possibility or that the dead one could be used for food if the other egg hatched…. but did I want to see it – no, I did not. And she didn’t warn a viewer that this is what was at the end of the footage. For me it was cruel.

Life lesson on joy and expectation turning to sorrow and grief?

Shitty lessons to learn.

But learn them, we do.

Mother Nature was not kind to me either. No babies for me. Old eggs.

…. as I type,  the eagle nest sways in the wind empty except for the lone egg…..