Sea-eagles pt 3

Earlier snaps are here and there.  These birds are too photogenic.  As a birding friend said, it is astonishing how much time one could spend looking at them!  Here are some shots from 26 August (10 days after hatching.)

I think I spent most of the time from 0645 to 0815 getting these, hoping to see a parent deliver fish.  Alas that happened while we were taking Tammie for a walk and when we came back Mum, doing the feeding, completely shaded S2.

Here is Dad feeding S2 on 29 August.

I didn't access the cam much for a couple of days, but the first day of Spring was celebrated with an extended bout of feeding.  At one point the thought did occur to me that, having killed S1 by dropping a dead pigeon on it, the parents were trying to repeat the trick on S2 with a large eel.

By 5 September S2 is getting quite large and also elastic in the neck department.

Judging by the pose, and the way it is stretched out, I suspect someone has spliced a little Meerkat DNA into the wee bird!

After a further 10 days the chick is getting rather large (use the post in the background to scale up), and also getting some pin feathers.  This image from 15 September.

I have not been visiting the site much recently.  However the change in S2 by 8 October (23 days from previous image)  is dramatic,

By 21 October (a further 13 days on, 9 weeks from hatching) S2 looks to be close to the size of the adults.

I would point out that it is the position of the camera, rather than my poor cropping skills, which have decapitated the bird.  Of course as soon as I had posted that shot S2 sat down and posed nicely.

Then an adult came and gave a good (OK reasonable) comparative shot.

According to HANZAB the fledging period is 65-70 days so the big event could occur within 2 days and almost certainly within a week.

S2 was still in the nest on 22 October.  However it was getting "serious air" on some of its hops around the bowl.

 Then it posed nicely to show the plumage pattern.

The chick first flew (officially known as 'branched") on 27 October.  Here is the You-tube of the event.  It was interesting that on the morning of the 29th it was back in the nest.