http://www.newson6.com/category/163029/sutton-eagle-camera Cam
VIAN, Oklahoma - Bird watchers around the world are being treated to an unusual sight in an eagle nest in eastern Oklahoma.
A great horned owl has begun incubating an abandoned bald eagle egg in a nest that has a camera installed on it.
The Sutton Center has used the cameras on nests near Vian and Stillwater for years to study bald eagles raising their young and to share the live pictures with a worldwide audience.
This year has illustrated the challenges the researchers face when studying nature.
A tree holding a nest and a camera in the Stillwater area collapsed in a wind storm near the end of 2012. Luckily no eagles had laid eggs in it.
A pair of eagles laid two eggs in the nest near Vian, but researchers say other adult eagles invaded the nesting pair's territory causing the pair to spend too much time off the nest and killing the eggs.
One of the eggs disappeared, but then a great horned owl showed up during the week of February 3, 2013, and began incubating the other one.
The researchers say it's an interesting phenomena, but not surprising.
"Female birds (and some males) are stimulated to incubate eggs, when influenced by hormones, and often may incubate almost any eggs in the vicinity when in that hormonal condition," according to the researchers.
They say the owl either lost her own clutch of eggs, but is still in the incubation phase of reproductive condition, or has come into "reproductive readiness" but has not bred.
They say she might be stimulated by the sight of the egg to incubate. They believe the "incubating drive" will likely wear off in a few days or could possibly continue for longer, even until the dead eagle egg explodes.
In the meantime, her presence offers a rare chance to see a great horned owl up close and in a completely natural state.
