WESTMINSTER, Colo. — A pair of bonded bald eagles at Standley Lake Regional Park have a new egg.
The Westminster park said its popular eagle nest has its first egg of the season.
The current pair of bald eagles laid the egg sometime Sunday afternoon. The egg could hatch the first week of April.
"Dad and Mom (F420) take turns incubating the egg at all times until it hatches," the park posted on Facebook. "The incubation period will last for about 35 days, and then we will keep a lookout for a baby eaglet!"
The Standley Lake nest became well-known in recent years due to a live camera installed in 2016 that allowed anyone in the world to watch the eagles' daily lives.
However, tragedy has recently befallen the nest with the couple losing their offspring in 2021 and 2022.
In 2021, F420 and her beau suffered tragedy when the tree that supported their nest split down the middle, causing the nest to collapse and killing their lone offspring.
After the nest collapse, F420 and the father eagle built a new nest deeper in the wildlife refuge where livestream cameras cannot reach. The park now has a distant live camera pointed at the trees.
In 2022, the pair's well-cared for eaglets were two-to-three weeks old when they died for unknown reasons.
There are dozens of bald eagle breeding pairs in the region. According to a Colorado Parks and Wildlife, there are 122 bald eagle nests in the northeast portion of the state.
That's a huge increase from the end of the 1970s, when Colorado had only three known bald eagle nests, and none on the Front Range.
Anyone looking for a nonintrusive way to watch a bald eagle nest can check out the Fort Saint Vrain eagle nest on the live Xcel Eagle Cam.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife said that people who travel to see a nest need to follow 'Leave No Trace' principles:
- Stay on designated trails. Be aware of closed sections of trails that are in place to protect nesting locations.
- Keep a proper buffer distance from wildlife. If you're altering the behavior of the animal, you're too close. Use a telephoto lens to "get closer."
- Don't feed or bait wildlife to attract them.
- Don't use recorded calls to attract birds to an area.
- Don't alter the scene for a photo (or for any reason). Leave all objects, leaves, branches, rocks, etc. where they are.
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