Mother eagle sheltering her young

Despite today's snow, ice, and rain, the eagle family is doing fine. The parents were very careful to keep their babies sheltered. You can see Mom holding her wings out and up to keep the rain and snow from her young. The bowl of softer materials that the eagles built in the larger nest also helps keep the babies away from the wet. I hope this is the last snowstorm the eagle family faces.

We are also looking forward to peregrine season. I've got some estimated hatch dates:

• Dairyland Genoa: 5/10
• Xcel Sherco: 5/11
• Great River Energy: 5/11
• Xcel Blackdog: 5/16 
• Xcel King Plant: 5/19

The Xcel Pawnee kestrels have laid egg #2. I don't feel quite as comfortable forecasting hatch for them, but I'll guess (a little weaker than an estimate) that hatch will occur around 5/20/2011. The kestrels are very fun to watch - they normally have a large brood which grows very quickly and behaves much more frenetically than the eagle young. Here is a link to a kestrel laying eggs (this is not one of our sites, but the video is very nice):

http://youtu.be/EGmzbS7IOVE

The Valmont owlets are growing rapidly. I need to thank the faithful forum members who have kept me up to date since we are having forum problems. I love these pics and would not get them otherwise. Click the Valmont Owl link in our nestviewer to watch this nest:

http://www.farmyou.com/falcon_cams/

The address looks a little odd because I moved the cams page to another domain (thanks, Ken!) to try to offload some traffic. But it is still the Raptor Resource Project. You can also visit our facebook to talk with other eaglecam fans:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Raptor-Resource-Project/103786266324668