Eagle watchers flock to Berry for weekend
Scores of eagle fans come from all over the Southeast.
Fans of the Berry College bald eagles got an up close and personal look at their favorite raptors this past weekend.
Normally, the group known on Facebook as the B3 Branch Buddies are fixated on their computer screens or smart television sets to watch the pair of adults and one eaglet.
The group was created in 2014 after Berry put up its initial eagle cam to monitor activity in the nest. The group now has almost 1,400 members online and between 60 and 75 of them came to Rome this weekend for some bird watching.
Louise Randall, who is from Eufaula, Alabama, said someone told her about the Berry Eagle cam in 2014.
“Next thing I knew I was up here with an iPad taking pictures,” she said. “Now I’m here with a Canon camera with a 400 millimeter lens.”
Randall also keeps tabs on a nest closer to her home that collapsed in a dead tree earlier this year. One of the two young on that nest was killed and the other is being cared for at the Southeastern Raptor Center at Auburn University.
Barbara Cavanaugh, who drove nearly nine hours to Rome from Wilmington, North Carolina learned of the Eagle cam from a sister-in-law four years ago and has been hooked ever since.
“I came up for the first reunion and met all these great people and I’ve been coming every year,” Cavanaugh said.
Kim Burling of Kennesaw said as much as she loves the eagles, it’s the people who bring her to the large gathering of eagle enthusiasts at Berry.
“They’re friendly and it doesn’t matter if you have a little camera or a big one,” Burling said. “The people with the really awesome cameras have taught me how to work mine.”
Tori Guthrie of Alpharetta agreed with Burling that the camaraderie with fellow birders
is what attracts her to the weekend event that is usually held twice a year.
One gathering occurs in the spring and the other in the fall when the eagles return from their summer forays away from the nest to start nest keeping for the following breeding season.
“I can watch the eagles on the computer at home but being able to come here and be with friends that I don’t see but once or twice a year is fun,” Guthrie said.
She admitted to spending maybe an hour a day on the computer watching the nest when young
are being raised. “I don’t really think I’m an eagleholic,” Guthrie said.
Wilma Caylor, from Calhoun proudly calls herself an “eagleholic” now.
The group held a moment of silence in the parking lot below the nest site on Saturday afternoon in memory of the one eaglet that fell out of the Berry nest and died earlier this year, as well as for several members of the group that have died in the past year.
The surviving eaglet on the Berry nest, known as B10, is now 10 weeks old and should be ready to fly in about two weeks.