We had a hard choice to make after Dad's disappearance. Could Mom raise her young by herself? After a lot of thought, I felt that we needed to 'trust the eagles', as Bob used to say, and keep our hands off the nest. But it wasn't my decision. I still remember John's tone of disbelief (and some indignation) when we discussed it and he asked "Why would we take Mom's babies from her?" The decision made, we followed the nest very closely. Had we done the right thing? We had! SuperMom proved more than capable of provisioning and caring for her young. As Sherri Elliott pointed out, Mom had multiple days of double-digit fish deliveries (10, 11, 12), but she broke the Decorah record by toting home 16 in one day and two of those deliveries utilized a 2-for-1 hatchery coupon! You can watch the original video here: [ Ссылка ] and here: [ Ссылка ].
Almost every Decorah Eagles chat mod included Mom's double-taloned fish delivery on their list. I wanted to share a couple of their comments...
"Mom raising 3 eaglets on her own was a sad, but wonderful thing to watch. Mom raising 3 eaglets on her own showed just how dedicated she was to seeing that the eaglets had all that they needed to survive. What a Mom!!! It was a jaw-dropping experience to watch."
"It was truly a season of Tears and Triumphs and trying to pick some favorite moments is like asking which one of my kids I love the most. The one huge lesson I think the 2018 season taught us was the resiliency of the American Bald Eagle. The manner in which the Queen of Decorah responded to all of her challenges was nothing short of incredible and taught us so much about bald eagles. My admiration for the eagles (which includes the DNN eagles) and what they can accomplish has been manifested ten-fold."
Thanks to Mom's hard work and dedication, all three eaglets - Dad's last genetic legacy - survived to fledge. Thank you so much for watching with us and please feel welcome to share your own memories of Super Mom below!
