Please remember to be safe this holiday weekend. Don't drink and drive. Don't text and drive. And certainly don't watch eaglecam on your phone while you are driving! It will be hot for the eagles here, but it looks like the threat of severe weather is out of the forecast.

Again, be safe this weekend.

Things are heating up for a long holiday weekend. We expect a chance of thunderstorms later today and again late Friday, then mostly hot an humid over the weekend with highs right around 90 degrees.

Stay tuned, because branching and fledging could happen at any time!

I have one of our corporate folks in town for a couple of days and had the opportunity to take her out near the nest yesterday. She follows the Alcoa EagleCam from her location in Indiana and as she travels to various Alcoa locations around the United States. We were able to see the three heads looking over the top of the nest and watch mom or dad fly by to check-in on the family. Alcoa and our employees are proud to share this experience with the world.

This morning we have already seen one of the eaglets so far out on the edge of the nest that it was pratically suspended in air. There was no place left to go but out or back into the nest. The eaglet chose to come back into the nest...but it won't be too much longer until they start making the other choice. The next few days could be very exciting!

How time flies. Faith is nine weeks old today and Hope will hit that mark on Wednesday and Spirit on Saturday. The weather for the next couple of days should be much cooler and less humid, so expect lots of energy being used up by these very active eaglets. You can still vote in our eaglet fledging poll on the Alcoa Facebook page at www.facebook.com/alcoa.

The temperature is heading up and so is the humidity this weekend. These guys may want to start flying just to cool off! With that said, I think we are all seeing a lot more exercising of the wings and flapping and hopping...or hovering in the nest this week.

So far the leading vote getter in our online poll for fledging is May 28th. More than 800 votes have been cast so far. You can still vote by clicking on the poll on the Alcoa Facebook page at www.facebook.com/alcoa.

Just to keep things interesting we have posted a new poll on the Alcoa Facebook page. Go to www.facebook.com/alcoa and you can vote on the date you think it is most likely one of the eaglets will fledge. There is nothing scientific about this and there are no prizes, just the satisfaction of know you may have picked the correct date. Have fun!

This week marks eight weeks since our eaglets hatched. Faith was first on March 19th, Hope joined us on March 21st and Spirit finally arrived on March 24th. It has been an awesone journey up to this point through cold, snow, rain, winds and lightning. It will be even more exciting as this trio begins to venture out of the nest. That could begin happening in the next week or two. Once it starts, we would expect to see them in and out of the nest now through much of July.

What a great Mother's Day this will be for Liberty and hopefully for all the mothers out there tuning-in. The oldest of the three eaglets will be eight weeks old tomorrow and the weather is absolutely beautiful.

The next week or two will be very exciting in the nest as Faith, Hope and Spirit get ready to fledge. Some have asked, but we only have this one camera view. That means once they all start flying, we will only see them as they leave the nest and when they come back in for a landing. If we are able to capture some images or grab some off-line video we will post it here on the site.

At one point this morning both parents were in the nest with all three eaglets. That was a crowd. We have also seen several times when one of the eaglets is really beginning to test his/her wings flapping until they just get a little space between their feet and the nest and then they settle back down. I think we can all expect to see a lot more of this over the next couple of weeks leading up to the actual fledging.

The three eaglets continue to eat and grow. We are still working on some technical issues, but the video stream has improved. As you all have noticed, the sound is out, but we hope to get that back today if possible.

Some have asked how we know it is the same parents using the nest each year. Research says when a pair builds a nest they will use it as long as they are successful or until it falls out of the tree (usually because it gets too heavy or a storm knocks it out). We also know from our local observations that Liberty and Justice stay here in the Quad Cities pretty much year-round. Even when they are not using the nest much in August and September we see them in other trees near the nest on a regular basis.

It looks like we will have a few days in a row with very nice "seasonal" weather with highs in the upper 60's to low 70's. We hope to get the video issue resolved today. We believe it is an issue with Mediacom and they are supposed to be out today to troubleshoot. and repair.

As others have mentioned, we do not do any work on the actual camera in the nest. All of this work is being done from the computer and in this case, from the Mediacom equipment connected to the computer.

Just so you all know, we are trying to diagnose why the video is jumpy on the internet. The original feed from the camera appears to be fine. We may be having an issue with the Mediacom modem uploading the feed to BitGravity. Hopefully we will be able to restore a smooth feed at some point today.

The video from the Alcoa EagleCam was a bit funky all weekend and the two lines of storms that came through overnight did not help. It appears the video has frozen even though the sound is still streaming. Hopefully we can get the video feed fixed and running a little later this morning.

The forecast for this week looks much drier after we get past tonight and tomorrow morning. The temperatures should be a little cooler too. I do not think our tech guys have gotten to the computer yet and it may be tomorrow before they do. Hopefully it will be a quick/easy fix. I cna tell you the camera is not loose in the tree. Hope everyone has a great Sunday!