Sunshine Brings Oklahoma's Eagle Nest Camera Back To Life

NewsOn6.com

BARTLESVILLE, OK -- After being offline for more than a week, one of the cameras that shows a bald eagle nest in central Oklahoma was up and running again, at least for a while.

Thursday afternoon the "close-up" camera showed that the chick is still on the nest, though it's lost just about all of its down and is looking more and more like an adult eagle.

Click here to see if the camera is working, on NewsOn6.com's special eagle nest camera page.

Neither the close-up camera nor the wide-angle camera at the nest had been working since April 30th.

The problems were caused by this spring's rainy, cloudy weather.

Both cameras are solar-powered and use batteries as a back-up power source.

Some kind of electrical problem damaged the wide-angle camera and it has been sent off for repairs.  A lack of sunshine kept the close-up camera from working until now.

The Sutton Center in Bartlesville, which set up the cameras, is replacing their batteries and is installing a small wind generator that will supplement the solar power.

Once the changes are made, the Center hopes they will prevent cloudy weather from knocking the cameras offline again.

Since the nest is located near Stillwater and not near the Sutton Center, the experts there were as much "in the dark" as everyone else about how the chick was doing.

But thanks to the sunshine Oklahoma has experienced this week, the close-up camera came back on-line, at least temporarily, and showed that the chick was doing well.