A Bird's-Eye View, Literally, Of An Eagle Nest At Accabonac Harbor

Make no mistake about it: Bald eagles are back. Sightings of the massive birds of prey, once a rarity in these parts, are now an almost common occurrence.

And you don’t even have to venture from the warmth of your home to get a good view of the birds in action, thanks to Marders Eagle Cam, a live camera view of a nest at Accabonac Harbor that can viewed by visiting the Marders website, marders.com, or entering Marders Eagle Cam on YouTube.

Tuesday afternoon, the nest was empty, but in recent days, a pair of eagles has been seen rebuilding their home, which they first moved into last year.

In the fall of 2018, Mica Marder said, his family added brush and wire mesh to an existing nest stand near the harbor. “We were thinking ospreys, we weren’t thinking eagles,” he said.

To his surprise, it was a pair of bald eagles instead that moved in last year. “My grandmother lives nearby, and we got her a high-powered spotting scope so she could watch them,” he said.

This winter, when the nest was quiet, Mr. Marder rigged it with a solar-powered wireless camera to offer it to a wider audience.

“It’s going to get interesting,” he said. “There are going to be some dramatic things when the eagles and ospreys battle for territory.”

Mike Bottini, who writes the “South Fork Outdoors” column for the Express News Group, said it is rare for eagles to nest in the open. “Their nesting preference is for a live tree with canopy cover,” he said. “It’s the complete opposite of ospreys, who like something they can easily fly in and out of with no obstructions.”

While eagles will typically bully osprey, stealing their food or even driving them from their nests, the two species can live together in an uneasy truce if there are ospreys in significant numbers to counter the stronger and larger eagles, Mr. Bottini said.

There are about nine osprey nests in Accabonac Harbor, according to Mr. Bottini, and he said last year, he watched ospreys keep the eagles in check. “Every time an adult left or returned to the nest, an osprey would dive at it,” he said. Although the pair successfully fledged two eaglets last year, he said the osprey left the young alone.

Once in serious decline, bald eagles, like osprey, started to make a comeback when DDT was banned. The last known nest on Long Island was on Gardiners Island in the 1930s. The first nest to be found on Long Island when the birds returned was also on Gardiners Island, in 2006. Those birds eventually fledged young, but it is anybody’s guess if the birds that have moved to Accabonac are their offspring.

Another eagle nest is in the Mashomack Preserve on Shelter Island, and Mr. Bottini said there are about 10 more active nests on Long Island.

Mr. Bottini said Marders Eagle Cam offered “a really neat opportunity” to watch a species, long associated with the wilderness, up close.

Mr. Marder said those who are interested in the behavior of osprey should check out Marders Osprey Cam on YouTube in the coming weeks when the birds return to their East End homes. That camera is set on a nest in Three Mile Harbor.