Comox Valley Naturalists Society

Guest Speaker

Sunday, May 21, 2006
Doug Carrick - Eagles of Hornby Island

The regular Monthly Meeting of the Comox Valley Naturalists Society will be held May 21, 2006 at 7:00 pm at the Florence Filberg Centre, 411 Anderton Avenue, Courtenay. The featured speaker will be Doug Carrick who will present his unique video on bald eagles.

After years of watching eagles from below, he had a video camera installed immediately above a nearby eagle nest. Over the last year he has taken six tapes of eagle activities and just recently has edited it down to a video of the best scenes. It begins with the eagles returning from migration to find something different – a camera! They stare at it and glare at it as only an eagle can do.  They step closer to it and push their beaks against the lens. As they approach, they get larger and larger until it looks like a giant eagle staring out of the TV into your room. They bring branches to the nest and often have domestic tiffs over where the branch is to be placed. The female is boss of the nest, but the male often contests this and takes a branch she has just placed and takes it to another spot.  There are frequent tug-of-wars over branches. The male brings most of the branches, dropping them into the nest for the awaiting female - often dropping them on top of her – presumably by accident, but perhaps not. There are scenes of the eagles eating fish in the nest and on one occasion, a neighbour’s chicken.  At times crows steal leftovers. These are just some of the scenes shown in the video.

Doug Carrick was brought up at Powell River and lived there for 30 years, moved to Victoria for 30 years, and retired to Hornby Island where he keeps detailed records and diaries on 18 eagle nests. Recently, his video camera was linked to the Internet so that people everywhere can also enjoy the eagles in real time. The live webcam link is www.infotecbusinesssystems.com/wildlife/.

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