Eagle cam highlights parents and nest on Gabriola Island, B.C.

The community of Gabriola Island, B.C., has always considered itself fortunate to be surrounded by an abundance of wildlife. Now, locals are sharing their good fortune with the world with a live eagle cam.

"Who doesn’t love watching what’s going on firsthand like that?" said Pam McCartney, a member of the Gabriola Rescue of Wildlife Society (GROWLS).

"It was a dream of the eagle monitoring team to have this done."

The society installed an eagle cam more than 25 metres in the air in a dead-top Douglas Fir last fall, which points down towards the nest in a neighbouring tree.

"We’ve been waiting since September for action and stuff started happening in January when they were coming back and fixing the nest and stuff," McCartney said.

GROWLS received a grant for the project from the Gabriola Recreation Society Grants-in-Aid program. The labour to install the birds-eye-view camera was handled by Tom Ainsworth, a former forest canopy researcher.

"I’ve been wanting to do it for years, it’s so nice to share it with other people and hopefully educate and promote their habitat," said Aiinsworth.

For him, the highlight was watching the eagles create their nest.

"One would bring in a branch and sort of tuck it in where they thought it needed to be and the other one would come and pull it out and stick it in somewhere else, so it’s funny to see that," he said.

But for most, the interest came from witnessing a rare glimpse at the eagles mating. Now the wait is on for the resulting egg to hatch, which should be sometime in early May.

EDUCATION BENEFITS

GROWLS was formed back in 1992 and the group’s volunteers spend much of their time rescuing birds and mammals that run into difficulties around the island.

The eagle project was seen as a way to help educate islanders on the importance of preserving habitat for the eagles.

"Each eagle tree also needs a perch tree, you can’t just have the one tree sitting there. So there’s been some instances where property owners have been unaware of these kinds of trees and we lost some nests which is pretty heartbreaking because those nests are a thousand pounds," McCartney said. "A lot of work goes into creating them."

The website is being viewed by individuals around the world and Ainsworth believes the traffic will really soar once the eaglet hatches.

"They’ll be feeding it and it’s going to be squawking and everything else," he said. "As the days get longer it gets a lot noisier here too early in the morning when the chick is hungry."

The eagle cam can be viewed online on the GROWLS website.