EagleWatch

Edward Slaney of Melbourne watches two nests. One sits some 400 yards behind a fire station and office park. "You can see the nest from the parking lot," he says. "But you can't get much closer because of the woods and swamp that surround it." The other nest is in someone's backyard. "It sits in a tall pine in the middle of what use to be horse pasture but close enough to the house and road that it's easy to get to."  

In contrast to that accessibility, the Wheeler family monitors a nest near Cape Canaveral in the middle of a wildlife refuge. Kim Wheeler, who shares eagle-watching duties with daughter Makayla and husband Mike, describes one attempt at monitoring their eagles. "We're always on the lookout for boars near the nest," she says. "We see their tracks and places where they've been rooting around. The other day, we were riding our bikes back to the spot where we could see the nest, and we heard what we thought were boars in the brush not far from us. We thought it best to turn ourselves around and get out of there."