Bald eagle couple in Colorado lays new egg after losing eaglets two years in a row
A bald eagle couple living in a Colorado park has laid its first egg of the season, after tragically losing two offspring consecutively in 2021 and 2022.
The expecting parents, who are monitored by a live camera that people around the world can tune into, laid the egg on Sunday afternoon, the Standley Lake Regional Park shared on Monday.
"The incubation period will last for about 35 days, and then we will keep a lookout for a baby eaglet!" the park said Sunday on Facebook. They added in a Monday post that, "we have decided to call the male and female bald eagles at Standley Lake 'Dad' and 'Mom'."
If all stays on schedule, we can expect to spot a new baby eaglet sometime in April.
Standley Lake has been a bit of an oasis for nesting bald eagle pairs since 1993, according to the park. And while the location has proven pretty ideal for the current bald eagle couple that is featured on the live camera, due to the nearby water and accessible sources of food, they have had to face some difficult hurdles in the last couple of years.
In 2021, the pair's nest collapsed, killing their only weeks-old eaglet named SL1. After their nest was destroyed, the mother and father decided to relocate a little further into the wilderness of the park, forcing park staff to reposition the live camera to capture a distant view of the eagle couple.
A year later, F420 and her partner lost two more eaglets, SL2 and SL3, though the reason why is not clear.
According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, there are nearly 317,000 bald eagles living in the country at the moment, including almost 71,500 nesting pairs.
