Ed Clark, President: Just how is it possible to explain the incredible events of 2011? Not just any event, mind you – but the phenomenon of Eagle Mania … the online, life-and-death drama that captured the hearts and minds of tens of thousands of people—hundreds of thousands of people—worldwide? If we were to have written the script for 2011, nobody would have found it the least bit feasible. What happened couldn’t have happened, but, it did!
It all started on a Tuesday afternoon—April 26 – when we got a call from a biologist from the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. He was calling to warn us … Warn us??? Warn us about what??? About the fact that life, as we knew it, was about to end!! It seems that the adult female eagle of the pair nesting at the Norfolk Botanical Gardens had just been killed in a collision with a commuter plane, leaving behind her mate and three, month-old eagle chicks. Now, this was not just any nest. It was the nest with the most popular eagle nest-cam on Earth! At least 150,000 people from around the world spent at least part of every day, glued to their computer monitors, studying the every move of these eagles … and I mean their every move … sometimes for years!
Now, one might ask just why someone might spend 12 hours watching a bird sit on an egg, but that’s a question for another day. Let’s just say, the degree to which the fans of this nest (and we all know the root word for “fan”) were devoted to these eagles is not easily described! Back in 2008, we had gotten a glimpse of just how … how … how … uh… “intense”, these people could be, when we got a chick from this same nest—this same pair of eagles—that came to be known as Buddy. His followers insinuated themselves into every nook and cranny of the Wildlife Center … making our business, their business … and simply refusing to go away! But by April 2011, just when we thought we had come to terms with Buddy’s fans, and had figured out how to deal with them, a bomb was dropped. State biologists planned to pull the chicks from the Norfolk nest and deliver them to WCV. Even though this news was supposed to be top-secret, it took about a nano-second for everyone in the Eagle Nation to hear the news, form an opinion, and start sending emails. In anticipation of the interest, I arranged to do a live “chat” with the participants on the eagle-cam discussion group once the chicks arrived the next day. The chicks arrived at 2:45 in the afternoon, and I logged onto the chat at 3:00. There were more than 16,000 people there waiting for me!!!
From that day on, we never looked back. Because we remembered how much interest there had been in our 2008 news updates, we recognized that a webcam and daily updates of our own would be very popular. So, even though he had to string coaxial cable through the limbs of trees within 48 hours, WCV Board member and IT wizard Kurt Plowman managed to get a live video feed going from WCV to WVEC-TV in Norfolk, hosts of the original web-cam. Thanks to this effort, the Eagle Nation could keep up with NX, NV, and NZ (the initials from their respective leg bands) – or “The Rock Stars”, as the chicks were quickly becoming known. What we could not have foreseen was just how much “keeping up” the Eagle Nation would do! It was, at times, overwhelming!
The day the NBG eagle chicks arrived at WCV, we had 30,000 visitors to our website! That not only crashed our website, but also the server of the telephone company on which our website was hosted … taking with it the websites of dozens of other businesses. The next day, the total number of visitors jumped to 40,000!! By the end of the first five days, more than 150,000 people had visited the WCV website, more visitors than in the previous two years combined!
Of even greater significance was the fact that many of these visitors chose to hit the “donate now” button, prominently displayed on each page of our website. In the first five days, WCV received contributions from some 3,000 people … mostly from first-time contributors. While this would have been enough to declare it a great year, the Eagle Nation was just warming up. Within weeks someone had nominated WCV for a competitive grant program sponsored by Chase Community Giving Foundation, a program that awarded funding to nonprofits based on votes the organizations received online. Even though we were late getting started, WCV was quickly propelled in the fourth position among nearly 200 nominees nationwide, winning a grant of $25,000 for the Center’s work. More importantly, a top-twenty finish in Round One got WCV a chance to compete in Round Two, where there was even more at stake. After seven days of an intensive get-out-the-vote effort, WCV finished in fifth position overall, receiving an astonishing $200,000 grant to upgrade WCV’s equipment, animal housing, and infrastructure—including our webcam network.
As The Rock Stars grew, we became all too aware of just how obsessive devoted the Eagle Nation was, and just how meddlesome helpful some of the members of Eagle Nation were. There seemed to be an unnatural interest in the level of water in the tubs in the eagles’ enclosure, with hours of discussion raging over whether the water was too deep, too shallow, too cool, too hot, or too dirty. The eagles did not care. Then, there were the sudden flurry of middle-of-the-night “emergencies” which had WCV’s after-hours emergency phone melting down. Not entirely by coincidence, these emergencies followed our installation of an infrared light over the nest which enabled web-cam viewers to watch the eaglets 24/7, which many apparently did! Then came the flood of frantic calls … like the night NV (the only male chick) stepped off the edge of the nest platform we had constructed for The Rock Stars and landed on the ground, a mere 30 inches below! It took some time, but we eventually taught the vigilant members of Eagle Nation that falling out of bed did not constitute a medical emergency. Then, there was the morning a yearling bear cub walked by, outside the eaglets’ enclosure, and outside the eight-foot chain-link perimeter fence surrounding the animal compound. Poor Dr. Miranda Sadar was on-call at that point. While surveillance photos showed the intruder to have been about 60 pounds, the callers described a giant, grizzly-like creature with evil intent. Poor Dr. Miranda, armed with a large stick, found everything in order when she arrived to investigate in the very-early hours of the morning … well, everything in the real world …
And so it went … but it was not just The Rock Stars who were the targets of such interest. A couple of weeks before my 60th birthday, I quipped on the webcam discussion one night that instead of the anticipated flood of birthday cards from the Eagle Nation, it would be nice if people would send $10 bills – I was kidding. The Eagle Nation was not! They responded … with more than 500 birthday cards and additional contributions to WCV, in honor of my milestone. There were also presents … like bedroom slippers in the shape of eagles, hand-painted wine glasses, assorted eagle statuary, t-shirts with eagles, and even some of my favorite adult beverage … Eagle Rare!
As the months rolled by, the members of the Eagle Nation gradually changed from a cult group of eagle lovers into an online family. Real friendships were formed, and a true community emerged. When the time came to release The Rock Stars, more than 1,200 members of the Eagle Nation showed up … from about 30 states, several Canadian provinces, and at least two other countries! It was the eagle event of the century. Since WCV had received five other eagle chicks, in addition to The Rock Stars, two of the not-so-famous eagles were released at the same time – the WCV’s first quintuple eagle release. In addition to tons of media attention, the event was streamed live over the Internet. Tens of thousands of others watched from their homes and offices. Mobile phones and wireless laptops were gushing minute-by-minute updates to Facebook and Twitter enthusiasts worldwide.
It was an unprecedented success … except for one thing. One of the eagles, NX, refused to leave!! After two attempts at launching her, she flew several hundred yards, landed on the ground, and refused to budge. When Eagle Nation found out, an all-out war raged over whether or not it was the cellular tracking device that had caused NX to refuse to fly away. It was not, but that did not stop many people from voicing contrary opinions … sometimes in the most forceful of terms! After four more weeks in captivity, and bit more time to mature, NX was eventually released again, transmitter and all. Through her “calls home” every second day, she took her followers on a tour of Tidewater Virginia, as she sought out her new home territory. So, a happy ending??? Not yet!!
In early December, WCV got a chilling phone call. NX had been found in the middle of a rural road, apparently injured, and was on her way back to WCV. She had apparently been feeding on a road-killed deer carcass when she was struck or blown down onto the pavement by a passing vehicle, but she did sustain significant contusions and a broken coracoid bone.
As 2011 draws to a close, NX is still with us, and so is the Eagle Nation … but now they have evolved into The Critter Nation … a community of tens of thousands of people who came together because of their shared interest in eagles, but who have come to know, love, and support the Wildlife Center of Virginia, and WCV’s diverse array of wild patients, including hawks, owls, bear cubs, and more than 150 other species of native wildlife. As we learned in 2008, these crazy enthusiastic people just won’t go away!! And we are delighted!