Harmar bald eagles suspected to have hatched an eaglet
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The Harmar bald eagles reportedly welcomed a newly hatched eaglet early Friday in their nest on a hillside above Route 28.
Confirmation was still pending Saturday morning from the Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania.
Without the benefit of a live webcam, observers including a photographer documented the birds likely feeding a hatchling in the nest.
“Everyone is so egg-cited,” said Gina Gilmore of Fox Chapel, who spends copious amounts of time at the Harmar site documenting the birds.
On Friday, she was observing the Harmar pair for about seven hours. One of the eagles brought a fish from the Allegheny River to the nest on Thursday, and on Friday, Gilmore took photos of what looks to be one of the eagles feeding something in the nest.
This would be the Harmar pair’s eighth eaglet in six years of nesting on the same steep bluff above Route 28 and the Allegheny River.
Their first nest, a former red-tailed hawk’s nest, fell late last year. So the birds built a new one farther along the same ridge.
However, there was no time to relocate a webcam, which was installed in the original nest tree by the Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania and CSE Corp. of Murrysville. There is a live webcam on another pair of bald eagle in Pittsburgh’s Hays neighborhood above the Monongahela River.
The Hays eagles can be viewed online.
The public won’t know for sure how many eaglets are in the Harmar nest until they grow and fledge in the coming months.
But fans of the birds and photographers, including the Facebook group Harmar Bald Eagles of Pittsburgh, will be keeping a close watch on the eagle family.