ENTERTAINMENT

Your nature fix: Nest cams

Carrie Blackmore Smith
csmith@enquirer.com
A juvenile red-tailed hawk rehabilitated by Raptor Inc. just before it was released back into the wild at Alms Park in 2013.

Update on June 3: The camera on top of PNC tower in Cincinnati is now on! There are three chicks, looking ready to fly any day now. Check them out!

So many bird cams, so little time.

Right now, the fledglings of the region's soaring hawks, falcons and large birds of prey are growing bigger. And if you don't have time to go find them yourself, you can actually watch them from anywhere, live-streaming on public bird cams.

One of the best ones I could find was the red tail hawk nest in Ithaca, New York, operated by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. This website also offers tons of fun clips to choose from, like one where the mother, Big Red, defends her chicks from an aerial intruder.

An American kestrel

There are also a lot of options to watch American kestrels, our smallest native falcon. The one in Boise, Idaho, keeps the camera rolling on a falcon and her five chicks, which all hatched in the last seven days.

The white downy balls in a nest at the Evanston Public library of peregrine falcon chicks were gone when I last checked.

The camera on a bald eagle nest in Pennsylvania is sort of foggy, but has caught some great shots of two young eagles.

A female red tailed hawk from Farbach-Werner Nature Preserve.

There's a clearer one operated out of Pittsburgh, but unfortunately both of the eggs that the female eagle laid in February broke.

Sadly, the black vulture and turkey vulture cams haven't seen much, if any, action this year.

And while Cincinnati's Raptor Inc. has a camera on a nest on the ledge of the 27th floor of the PNC Bank tower in Downtown, it doesn't seem to be working at the moment.

For a full list of nesting cams, visit www.viewbirds.com.

This is a weekly feature, so I'm always searching for ideas. Got one? Email me at csmith@enquirer.com and consider joining the Facebook group: Greater Cincinnati Outdoor Enthusiasts.