Not Iowans, but Alaskan eaglets

The live video feed from the bald eagle nest at the Decorah Fish Hatchery in Iowa has received 11 million hits, and at times has 100,000 viewers. It’s not the eagles, but the number of hits that is the subject of news stories from National Public Radio, the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse (via Yahoo! News). (I had to link to a cached copy of the AP story because it disappeared off the internet.)

The video cam is sponsored by the Raptor Resource Project, a non-profit organization that creates, improves and maintains raptor nests in the Midwest, with the intent of boosting raptor populations. In the AP story, Raptor Resource Project executive director Bob Anderson says that a technology upgrade, funded by the Upper Iowa Audubon Society, may have boosted the site’s hits. This year the site has a better hosting platform and better video quality.

See the feed for yourself, at the Raptor Resource Project Web site (which was a little slow at the time this was posted) or excerpts on its YouTube channel.

It may be time to take advantage of the buzz by promoting your department’s own nest cams. Keep in mind, though, that the video quality on the Decorah eagle cam is the best that I’ve seen in a nest cam, so this news may mean that everyone else will need to upgrade to keep the public’s interest.

Photo: These bald eaglets in Alaska are a little older than the Iowa eagle nestlings were at the time of posting.
Photo credit: US Fish & Wildlife Service