The Bald Eagle family continues to do well together and spend the majority of their time hanging out on the nest platform together. 23-620 is a bit uncertain about what to do when the babies bite and food beg at her face, but both babies are capable of eating on their own and don't actually need her to feed them. 25-214 is the bolder of the babies, and was first to venture off the nest platform. 25-215 has also ventured off the nest platform at this point, but both keep returning to the platform to lay in the nest and perch on the edge. While both eaglets spend plenty of time wingersizing to build their flight muscles, neither is ready to take their first flight. Each of their forays out of the nest just involves running around the ground for a bit before using the ramp to return to the nest. We'd like to thank whoever purchased the new trail camera from our Amazon Baby Registry. While we are still having some issues getting the camera to record motion events to the cloud, the ability for us to live view the camera is working perfectly. This lets us check in on the eaglets whenever we'd like and take recordings of what they are currently doing. The final clip of this video is from the new camera. We positioned the camera up high so that we can use it to better monitor the eagles once they start flying. We are also able to control the camera remotely to zoom in on where the birds are currently at! We are currently working to resolve the motion capture recording issue and hope to be able to use it to share more footage of these four with all of you. This camera will be incredibly useful for monitoring patients that go into our big flight in the future and once we've worked out the kinks, we hope to place more in some of our other aviaries! A reminder to anyone who has purchased items from our Amazon Baby Registry: Amazon does not give us your contact info so we are unable to reach out and thank you personally for the donation. If you would like to be individually thanked for your donation, or require a donation receipt, please reach out to us at donate@worldbirdsanctuary.org with which items you purchased for us. (fb)

Baby season is picking up, especially with the recent tornado that caused catastrophic damage to parts of St. Louis. WBS is fortunate that our site is far enough away from the affected area to be undamaged. Many wild birds weren't so lucky and as people have worked to clear fallen trees, many destroyed nests have been found. While many were too injured to survive the destruction, 16 survivors have been found and brought to our hospital for care. 12 of those new patients are babies, bringing our baby count for the year up to 67. These 67 babies represent all 6 of the most commonly nesting raptors in our area for this time of year. Barred Owl babies are currently our most common species (as usual), but some of the later nesting species, such as Red-shouldered Hawks, will likely start catching up as we move further into the season. We also expect to start seeing additional species soon such as Cooper's Hawks, Broad-winged Hawks, and Mississippi Kites. Our first choice is to reunite these babies with their original families or place them into a wild foster nest. 22 of these year's babies have been healthy enough to be renested after just a short stay in our hospital! The remaining babies have either been too severely injured to renest or did not have a suitable environment to be renested in. These babies are instead placed with our incredible foster parents while in care. We'd like to thank everyone who has already donated to our GiveLively Baby Season fundraiser for food and medicine costs or purchased essential supplies from our Amazon baby registry. We are 12.5% of the way to the funds needed to provide care for the nearly 200 babies we will see this year! Babies require a highly nutritious diet to develop normally and can eat twice as much as an adult. Right now, it cost over $300 per day just to feed all of our patients. Several babies have also required expensive surgical repairs of their fractures. Your generosity allows us to continue providing the life saving care they need. We could not do what we do without each and every one of you who has supported us. Thank You! If you are looking to donate towards our baby patients, you can find a link to our Baby Season fundraiser in the comments or can find our Baby Registry by searching for World Bird Sanctuary on Amazon's Baby Registry site. (fb)