Hello,
While I was in Australia in October I had the remarkable good fortune to
spend some time on a working sheep station (45,000 acres on the Murray
River). The owner of the station is wildlife friendly and we went on a
foray to find the elusive wedge-tailed eagles (the largest eagles in the
world) that he knew were nesting in the mallee scrub. He had been looking
for several months to no avail. After about 2 hours we actually found the
nest with 2 downy eaglets (we nearly ran into the tree at just about dark).
He just wrote back a note to say the two are doing well and feathered,
now standing on the nest edge. He has since found another nest on his
station with another 2 eaglets!.
The nests are very large and look similar to bald eagle nests except
they were in much smaller trees and had a larger underbase to accomodate the
shape of the tree.
I write this to say that some of the station owners down there really do
work with wildlife and are active in habitat conservation.
Martha Jordan
marthaj at premier1.net