Delaware Botanic Gardens raising funds for a bald eagle camera

DAGSBORO, Del. - The Delaware Botanic Gardens will be kicking off a fundraising event for a bald eagle camera and trail cameras during Delaware’s Do More 24 Campaign Thursday into Friday. 

The fundraising campaign will continue all year long or until enough funds are raised for the eagle camera and trail cameras. The Delaware Botanic Gardens opens on March 14th. Visitors to the Delaware Botanic Gardens will be able to donate in person at the visitor center or online. 

A pair of bald eagles have been nesting along the 1,000 feet of shoreline, along the Pepper Creek, at the botanic gardens for a few years now. These eagles are believed to be a mature couple who are only raising one egg and hatchling a year. You can find the eagles soaring high above the botanic gardens or sitting perched atop trees throughout the many trails that wind through the woods at the gardens.

The hope is that with the addition of a camera on the nest, more will be able to be learned about this bald eagle pair and its young. The camera will not be able to be installed until a small window between August and October, when the eagles leave the nest for other places.

The Delaware Botanic Gardens is not just home to a pair of eagles, but also to numerous other wildlife. The gardens told CoastTV News that there is a fox den with cubs on the grounds along with kestrels, woodpeckers, groundhogs, and the occasional skunk. Due to the vast number of wildlife that call the gardens home, they want to place trail cameras throughout the gardens for people to watch when the gardens are closed.

The company that will be placing the eagle and trail cameras is HDOnTap, which hosts many other nature cameras throughout the country, including two at the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge in Cambridge. The plan is for the cameras at the Delaware Botanic Gardens to be available for viewing on the HDOnTap website, the Delaware Botanic Gardens website, and at the visitor center.

Ultimately these cameras will allow the botanic gardens to continue achieving its mission.

“We have the native plants, we’re certainly building upon that, we’re building the plant collections that we need here at the botanic gardens, but also we wanted to make people aware that providing a balance where the foxes and the groundhogs and the wild birds can actually live in a type of harmony and automatically keep each other under control is all a part of the sustainable mission of the gardens,” explained Stephen Pryce Lea, Director of Horticulture and Educational Program at the Delaware Botanic Gardens.

You can donate to help the Delaware Botanic Gardens purchase these cameras here.