No, it’s not an off-season NFL match up. Mary and I have been following both the downtown San Jose Falcons and the Channel Islands National Park Eagles webcams. It’s not a competition of course, other than maybe for our DSL bandwidth. Both webcams are the best we’ve found for their species.

The San Jose Falcons nest on the 18th floor of City Hall. A nest box was placed there in 2006 after a male (Jose) and female (Clara) had been seen frequenting the area. The pair took up residence and had 3 offspring in 2007. This year, there’s a new male (Carlos) and three new little chicks. The nest and webcam are monitored by the Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group. Last year one of their staff repelled down from the roof to band the chicks. I imagine that will happen again in the next month or so. Of course the best thing about these falcons is we can head to downtown to San Jose and see them flying around. We managed to see two of the three chicks fledge last year and hope to do as well this year. Even if we don’t see them fledge, we’ll definitely enjoy watching them learn to fly around downtown San Jose.

The Channel Islands Eagles nest on Santa Cruz Island in Channel Islands National Park. The pair of eagles started nesting there in 2006. The male (K-10) and female (K-26) were both fostered on Catalina Island in 2001 and 2002 respectively. There were the first pair to hatch an egg on the Channel Islands in more than 50 years. The camera setup had to be backpacked to the site, which doesn’t sound like much until you add the microwave dish, solar array and battery! The camera is pretty high quality and includes sounds. There are currently two chicks in the nest born in early April. “Channel Islands Live” is made possible by the Ventura County Office of Education and Channel Islands National Park.