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Sea-EagleCAM

1,482,535 Live Views 903 In Crowd

Video showing is of the 16th September 2011 - S2 is 33 days old.

There will be a special CHAT session on Saturday 3rd March 2012 from 7:00am to 7:00pm net time.

Keep up to date Go to our Forum

www.Sea-EagleCAM.org/Forums

The Birds Australia Discovery Centre is an interactive interpretive hub where we provide opportunities for people to learn about and engage with birds in their natural habitat. And what better way to do so than by observing our resident pair of White-bellied Sea-Eagles on the nest! EagleCAM, gives bird lovers, researchers and scientists, 24-hour access into the lives of nesting sea-eagles and allows us to investigate their habitat, habits and how we can help them survive long term.

Established in 2009, EagleCAM (Sea-EagleCAM on Ustream) is a live remote feed that operates out of the Discovery Centre in Newington Armory at Sydney Olympic Park, close to the Parramatta River. EagleCAM was started and funded by a small group of Birds Australia volunteers, who continue to develop and operate the technology that brings the sea-eagles to your screen.

Despite the collapse of the nesting tree earlier in the year this remarkable couple have built a new nest in double-quick time and recently hatched two chicks. Through EagleCAM, you have a unique and amazing opportunity to follow their progress as the eaglets grow towards fledging.

Please check out our Facebook page Sea-EagleCAM and visit the EagleCAM page on the Birds Australia website for recent video footage from the nest.

If you see any interesting behaviour and if, in particular, you see a changeover of brooding duties during the night (about an hour after the picture has changed from colour to black and white) then please email us. Remember to include time and date and also your location, so that we can correlate your time with Australian time (AEST).

Chat Room Rules

1. Be respectful, polite, and focused on eagles.
2. No profanity, personal invective, or other inappropriate comments.
3. No comments touching on politics, religion, or sports. Respect the diversity of the room.
4. No social chat. Limit personal information, either asked or given. Age, gender, and other such details are unnecessary or even inadvisable. This is a very busy chat room, so "roll calls" of chatters' locations will be stopped.
5. Disagreements might be unavoidable but should remain polite, and they should never become arguments.
6. Do not post strings of several emoticons, smileys, or random characters, either on a single line or in successive posts. Do not post in all caps, it’s like YELLING.
7. Moderators (mods) can timeout, kick, or permanently ban chat abusers, and can delete inappropriate posts.
8. Allow mods to deal with chat abusers, do not engage them yourself, keep your posts relevant to the eagles.
9. Respect the mods, who are here to make sure all viewers have a good experience.
10 Chatting is a privilege, not a right. Often the chat room is maxed out and other chatters are waiting to get in. If your presence is disruptive, mods will make way for others to take your place.

Recent Events

29/11/11 S2 FLEDGED on the 10th November 2011. Has been seen at the nest for a few day. After about two weeks S2 has left the nest area and has been seen in the Waterbird Refuge in Sydney Olympic Park looking fit and healthy.

19/08/11 The first eaglet (S1) sadly passed away today after being suffocated in the nest by a pigeon carcass in very wet and cold weather. The second eaglet (S2) is growing strongly.

15/08/11 SECOND HATCH: The second eaglet (S2) hatched on Monday 15th August at 1:45pm local time Australia (we are UTC+10 hours) after pipping at 9:45am (see Channel 7 News Story from 19th August 2011).

14/08/11 FIRST HATCH: Pop the Champagne! The first eaglet (S1) hatched on Sunday 14th August at 8:55am local time Australia after pipping at 3:00pm on the 13th.

07/07/11 SECOND EGG: The second egg was laid on Thursday 7th July at 6:00pm local time Australia. Mum is staying very close to the eggs. The temperature was down to about 4C (39F) this morning.

04/07/11 FIRST EGG: Start the fireworks!!! At approximately 5:40pm on Monday 4th July the first egg was laid. The female had been sat in the nest since 5:15pm. She stood up a few times where we could see that, initially, the nest was empty. She then stood up at 5:40pm and there it was! Keep a close eye on what happens during the night as nobody has ever observed WBSEs on the nest at night before!

Some Basic Information On The Sea-Eagles & Sea-EagleCAM

Sea-EagleCAM has set up a high definition video camera monitoring the local White-bellied Sea-Eagles’ nest, 15 metres (50 feet) above the ground, in a eucalyptus tree within a protected nature reserve of Sydney Olympic Park, Australia (see Channel 7 News Story from August 2010). The video is fed back to the Birds Australia Discovery Centre at Olympic Park via an optical fibre cable giving a high definition video display to visitors as well as the video stream to Ustream.


The White-bellied Sea-Eagle (Haliaeetus leucogaster) is the second largest bird of prey in Australia with a wing span of 1.8-2.2 metres (6-7 feet). It measures 75-85cm (30-33 inches) in length and can weigh up to 4.2kg (9 pounds), the female being larger and heavier than the male. Sea-eagles are found around the coast and along the major rivers of mainland Australia and Tasmania, New Guinea, South East Asia and as far west as the coast of India.


Our eagles started to build a new nest in May after the tree in which they had their old nest for several years fell down in February (see Channel 7 News Story from February 2011). They usually lay two eggs at the end of June or early July and incubate them for forty days before hatching in early August. The young remain on the nest for approximately three months until they are ready to fly at the beginning of November. They then spend most of their time away from the nest but, if the adults are still bringing in food, they may occasionally be seen at the nest up until January the following year. The young birds may take up to six years to reach maturity, gradually losing their brown juvenile plumage and gaining the characteristic grey and white plumage of the adults. Sea-eagles may live for up to 30 years. Their diet is mainly fish but also includes birds, reptiles, mammals and carrion. Our eagles take fish from the nearby Parramatta River and surrounding wetlands of Olympic Park but when the eaglets are approximately 1-2 months old, a large part of their diet is made up of Silver Gulls caught from a small breeding colony on the wrecks in Homebush Bay.

S2 week 11

Below are a few photo sets from the previous few years which might help in the identification of the individual birds.

Photos from 2007-2008 Hunting and nesting with eaglet in nest (7 pages)
Photos from 2009 Hunting and nesting with eaglet in nest (18 pages)
Photos from 2010 Mainly hunting but with some shots of the eaglets branching (8 pages)
Photos from 2011 So far...hunting (6 pages)

Email: eaglecam@birdsaustralia.com.au

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