People love watching nature on nest cams — until it gets grisly

[FLPanhandle]

http://wpo.st/1yMb1

&w=1484


The osprey cam at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is trained on a nest near the Massachusetts seaside, and the pair that call it home are now waiting for three eggs to hatch. But for the first spring in a decade, the camera is dark, and a note on the institute’s website offers only a two-sentence explanation.

“Regrettably, the cam will not be operating this season due to the increasingly aggressive actions of certain viewers the last two years,” it begins.

That is a staid reference to cam fans whose emotions about the nest morphed into vitriol — and fighting words. When the osprey mother began neglecting and attacking her chicks in 2014, anxiety exploded among some viewers, as did demands that the institution intervene to save the baby birds. When the same thing happened in 2015, the public passions took a more personal turn.

“It is absolutely disgusting that you will not take those chicks away from that demented witch of a parent!!!!!” one viewer emailed to Jeffrey Brodeur, the communications specialist who ran the camera. Another wrote: “I realize this is nature, but once you put up a cam to view into their worlds it is no longer nature. You have a responsibility to help n save when in need.”

But nests are also nature, and nature can be nasty. Last month, a Pittsburgh cam’s bald eagles made national news when they fed a small cat to their eaglets.

Many chicks don’t survive their first year: Some starve to death, their carcasses decaying for all the Internet to see. Some are preyed upon by hawks or crows or cats. Some are slain by their nestmates.

And some viewers just can’t handle the tragedy.

Brodeur, who had taken on the camera as a pet project, weathered the ire of the 2014 season and adhered to a policy of refusing to intervene, as advised by osprey experts. The drama revved up again last summer, when the osprey parents weren’t bringing in enough fish for the two chicks. One day in mid-July, Brodeur said, his phone “just starts blowing up.” He looked at the nest, which is on a platform right outside his second-floor office window.

“There’s a lot of wing-flapping going on,” he recalled. “The younger of the two had worked its way to the edge, and the older one went for the kill. Shoved it out of the nest. And it’s all live on camera.”

The Woods Hole experience isn’t unusual, and it’s the reason most nest cam operators publish policies on when they’ll intervene. One Montana osprey cam reminds viewers that it “is not a Disney movie.”

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Another example:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/time-lapse-bird-nest_us_5738dc8fe4b08f96c1837406

Mother Nature doesn't care about you people!

[a kennedy]

1. I've said all along....love nature until it has to eat.

[Egnever]

2. These stories make me giggle.

Aww how cute ....WTF!!

[Rex]

8. Me too...'oh look how cute they are...OMG THEY ARE EATING KITTENZ!!!'

Suddenly shit gets real serious!

[Major Nikon]

10. Some time back some coyote were eating cats from my neighborhood

Some of my neighbors were pissed off the city would do nothing about it. The reason the coyote were there in the first place was my neighbors kept providing them with a fresh supply of cats.

[malaise]

12. ROFL

because I watch 'our' feral cats and alpha male kicks all males out of the pack. It's hard to watch but humans must learn to mind our business.

[uppityperson]

3. Nature is natural, not prepacked unrecognizable tofurkeys and songs and music

[msongs]

4. ospreys act like humans. humans don't take it well nt

[Brickbat]

5. It's good for people to see all sides of nature. Science, mofos!

[mountain grammy]

6. Humans intervened when the platform was built and the camera added..

but it must end there. Maybe the camera went too far because many Americans don't want to understand nature.

[Warpy]

7. Yeah, and one of the eagle cams this year

featured a mother eagle feeding a house cat to her young. Mother Nature can be pretty cruel, especially to people raised on Disney.

It's not unusual for a younger hatchling to be pushed out of the nest. It's how the elder manages to ensure enough food so that s/he will fledge and then fly, something that is generally not the case if both live. These are not human children and their rules are different.

It's amazing how many people try to anthropomorphize these creatures.

[Rex]

9. Yes because all those rats, mice, voles, rabbits, other birds, fish, something squished already...

DIDN'T FEEL A THING! Kittenz? Shit just got REAL...

[ileus]

11. Have you ever experience one of the "only sharks and owls need to eat meat" threads here?