Hancock Wildlife Foundation has placed webcams in several bald eagle nests in British Columbia, including one near the Orphaned Wildlife Rehabilitation Society (known as O.W.L.) in the district municipality of Delta, a little south of Vancouver - and that bald eagle nest is known as the Delta OWL nest. The eagles have been seen in the area, but have not done any work on the nest - and while we hope they will begin adding the final touches before mid-March when they're most likely to lay eggs, this particular pair apparently doesn't nest every year, so it's anyone's guess if they will visit the nest this spring.

The nest is in great shape - the team from Hancock Wildlife added fresh branches when they were there to do maintenance on the cam in the fall, knowing that the pair appeared to enjoy a ready-made nest the previous year, and having seen their not-very-successful attempts to build a nest on their own. And it appears that someone is enjoying it - on February 17, observers logged into the cam to see a pair of raccoons sleeping in the nest! They slept there all day - and as darkness fell, they woke up, engaged in a bit of what appeared to be playful behavior - and left. You can read about their visit and see a number of pictures of them here: click here for PIXS!

We wondered if they would return the next day - but they did not. Several people checked regularly - and they were not seen again - until February 25. The nest was empty when someone checked at 9:04 am - and at 9:38 am, there was one little raccoon sleeping there. The link to read about today's visit is: Click here for update!

There's no way to know if this is one of the pair that visited before, but it looks about the same size.

As you can see by reading the posts on the Hancock Wildlife forum linked above, people do have mixed feelings about the presence of the raccoons. They are cute - but we would like to see the eagles nest this year, and a raccoon is a threat to young eagles. Also, adult eagles and raccoons can both be quite vicious, so one or both could be badly injured if there was a confrontation. Raccoons have been seen in other eagle nests with cams, and generally don't approach once the eagles begin spending time at the nest - so we are hoping things will be resolved peacefully here as well.

JudyB and Charley Noble