I'll give the short answer first: we don't know yet, and we probably won't know for another two to four weeks. Having said that, there are some things we can all watch for. They include:
- Mom and Dad at the tree. They do seem to have been making more visits to the Y-branch and environs lately.
- Mom and Dad visiting the original nest.
- Mom and Dad working on the original nest. We're especially watching for soft nesting materials such as grass and cornstalks.
I visited some older videos to take a look at Mom, Dad, and the nest in 2012 and 2011. Last winter was unusually warm, and the eagles began their nest-building earlier than in 2011. While the eagles were bringing in sticks quite regularly, softer nesting materials didn't begin appearing until sometime between January 11 and January 26, as shown by these two videos:
The winter of 2011 was more comparable to this winter: colder and snowier! Again, the eagles brought in sticks fairly early on, but soft nesting materials really didn't begin to appear until January 21st, as these two videos show.
By 2/9/11, the bowl was mostly built, as shown here:
http://youtu.be/ddgd6350xpc. We'd certainly like to know what the eagles plan to do, but as usual, they will tell us in their own time. If we start seeing a lot of visits to the nest, we'll train the default camera view on it. You are welcome to view old videos on our youtube channel as we wait to see what the eagles do:
http://www.youtube.com/user/ries96
