As the lake thaws and spring arrives, folks are seeing some pretty cool birds -- including the Ring-necked Ducks (above), a Brown Creeper (right, below) and Eastern Phoebe photographed in the past couple of days by Alice Leurck.

(Thanks, Alice!)

This was sent out by e-mail today to folks who subscribe to the Fyke e-mail list.

Dear Friends of the Allendale Red-shouldered Hawks,

We at the Fyke Nature Association regret to inform you that the Laura and her mate have decided to nest in a new tree this season, which makes our recent effort to install a streaming video cam in vain.

The good news is that Laura appears to be incubating at least one egg -- the 15th year in a row that these hawks have nested in Allendale or nearby Ramsey. The unfortunate news is that the nest is elsewhere  -- still in Allendale, but elsewhere. Nature has a mind of its own.

We are now trying to sell the equipment, and should have a better idea of where we stand in a few weeks.  We will be offering appropriate refunds as soon as we can. And we still plan to do a free updated eBook on the hawks and will mention all donors by name.

I just posted a nine-photo sequence of yesterday's eagle egg hatching at Duke Farms, via their webcam. The photo above is of the eaglet taken at 7:09 this morning.

The link is here.

One of the Duke Farms eagle eggs is hatching. (pic above.)

I interviewed biologist Larissa Smith of Conserve Wildlife Foundation to learn more about young eagle nestlings.

The post on the Duke Farms blog is here.

The cam is here.

With the large winter fish kill at the Celery Farm, we are seeing fish and fish parts everywhere.

The fish head above was on our front walk when we returned on Wednesday.