The eagle cam has landed in West Mifflin, and viewership is soaring.
During the last 48 hours, more than 8,000 people tuned in to watch Stella the bald eagle after she laid her first egg in a nest outside U.S. Steel’s Mon Valley Works-Irvin Plant on Thursday night.
U.S. Steel Corporation partnered with PixCams of Murrysville to set up four cameras around the bald eagle nest in West Mifflin belonging to proud parents Stella and Irvin.
Stella is a play on the word “steel,” and Irvin is named after the facility.
In the last 30 days, more than 81,000 bird-watchers have tuned in to the eagle cams to track the pair’s parenting progress, according to Bill Powers, PixCams’ president.
The U.S. Steel eagle cams currently bring in over a quarter of PixCams’ overall viewership.
In previous years, the Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania had a similar eagle livestream through PixCams in Pittsburgh’s Hays neighborhood that gathered most of the area’s eagle-viewing enthusiasts.
But since storms destroyed the nest last August, many of those viewers have flocked to U.S. Steel’s cam.
While there is no longer a nest at Hays, PixCams’ livestream for that area still represents 10% of company’s total viewers.
Eggs-spectations
U.S. Steel expects another egg to be laid on Sunday.
“It’s exciting times for us. Hopefully they’re doing delayed incubation,” said Donald German, Irvin works’ manager. “Viewers should totally tune in Sunday evening and hopefully see a second egg from Stella.”
This is U.S. Steel’s fourth season running the bald eagle livestream.
The cameras provide viewers with angles of the “nest bowl” so viewers can see when the eggs hatch. There’s also an aerial view from the hillside to capture the eaglets once they begin to fly. Another camera shoots from an angle about a quarter-mile away so viewers can see the birds hunting.
The high definition footage shows the eagle family 24/7.
Other bald eagle livestreams run by PixCams see a significantly lower amounts of traffic.
Over the past 30 days, Little Miami Conservancy in Ohio tallied roughly 47,400 viewers. Ott Family Bald Eagles Nest in New York has roughly 14,300 people watching. And Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge in New York drew about 12,800 viewers.
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U.S. Steel and PixCams expect excitement to continue to grow as more eggs are laid and the baby eaglets begin to hatch. They’re anticipating four to five times the daily viewership.
German said he wasn’t sure what to expect this year because Stella was just coming into maturity, but the 5-year-old female’s egg is the eighth to be laid in the U.S. Steel nest. The others came from different parents.
“From an environmental standpoint, I think that this is a great area for us, because of one, the river never freezes over with the barges,” German said. “Ninety-five percent of their diet is fish. So it is perfect for them to be able to fly and hunt and so forth.”
Rachel Handel, a spokesperson for the local Audubon Society, said while there is no longer a nest in Hays, people frequently spot eagles in the area.
“Here in Pittsburgh, we’ve got the hillsides that are covered in trees, and at the bottom of the hillside there’s the river, and it really just provides kind of an excellent place for them to be able to build in a secure location and then to have really quick access to the food that they’re going to need as they raise their young,” Handel said.
Handel warns viewers not to personify the eagles too much because they are “wild animals” and seeing their predatory behavior can make people uneasy.