Watch: Baby Eagle to Hatch Live Via Webcam
The last of three Internet celebrity baby eagles is expected to hatch live on a webcam in the next 48 hours.
The wildly popular webcam has been focused on their nest in Decorah, Iowa, so you can watch along as the eagle parents feed muskrat flesh to the newborns, rock back-and-forth over the last egg and keep their head on a swivel as they watch for predators.
Over the weekend, the webcam drew more than 100,000 eagle watchers, temporarily crashing the website.
Starting on Feb. 25, the mother laid three eggs in eight days. The first bird hatched in the early morning hours on April 2, and was caught on camera by members of the nonprofit preservation group Raptor Resource Project.
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The second eagle chick hatched a day later around the same time.
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The third egg should hatch in the next few days, Bob Anderson, director of Raptor Resource Project, told Wired.
The webcam will run around the clock, using infrared light at night to monitor the nest. Earlier today, the camera zoomed in on one of the adult eagles as it ripped apart a muskrat to feed to the newly hatched chicks.
There's plenty of room in the nest for the family. Built in 2007, the nest is extremely large. Perched 80 feet (24 meters) high, the nest is about 6 feet (1.8 m) across, and the same distance deep. It weighs 1.5 tons. In other words, the nest is larger than an old Volkswagen Beetle.
Watch the eagle hatch live on the webcam here.
