Views from above: Kansas farmer sets up livestream over bald eagle roost
Two eagles in an old cottonwood tree on a family farm in Peabody can expect to have dozens of internet eyes on them at any given time.
As far back as he can remember, Derek Klingenberg, a YouTuber known as Farmer Derek, recalls seeing one or two bald eagles showing up on the farm each year. They would show up at the third-generation family farm and leave within a couple of weeks. That changed in 2019 when a couple of eagles showed up in the fall, set up a nest and stayed through the winter. The eagles, which he thinks are a young couple, came back in late 2020 and have built up a much more formidable nest in the cottonwood tree that sits in a meadow.
Klingenberg named the two eagles after his grandparents, Willie and Marie.
He decided to put a worm’s eye view on the eagles, which mate for life.
“What are the odds that I’m a YouTuber and I love eagles and they built a nest within WiFi range?” he said. “I’m like, I have to do this. It’s really interesting.”
He saw the eagles mostly didn’t roost in the tree at night, so made a plan to move in then. The one time they did sleep in the roost, a video caught a great horned owl knocking Willie out of the nest.
With the help of at least one of his three daughters, the 41-year-old made a “really long ladder” and a platform that attached to it, one of his YouTube videos shows.
But the ladder didn’t work out because of a large branch.
A friend offered a bucket truck that made it so Klingenberg could install a camera 40 feet high in the tree. He uses WiFi coming from a nearby grain elevator to provide a live feed.
The video went live on Jan. 8, and Klingenberg made it open for the public soon after.
Klingenberg has also ventured off his property to see where Willie and Marie go. It took him a few miles away to an area where he found 50 bald eagles and was able to shoot video of at least a half-dozen congregating in trees.
“I don’t feel like I have proven there is 50, but that’s what I counted,” he said. “It’s not very scientific.”
The eagles don’t let him get close, but the camera does.
He said Marie will stake out the roost much more than Willie during the day, gathering sticks and building it up. Willie tries to help by bringing sticks, but Marie is particular about having things a certain way.
Just before noon on Friday, the live feed showed Marie land in the roost with a stick and start to push Willie out of the way.
“She just bosses him around,” he said.
A great horned owl occupied the roost by Friday night. The camera has also caught a great horned owl bringing its mate a mouse on a prior night.
Last season, Marie sat in the roost most days for about two weeks, Klingenberg said. He thought she was laying eggs, but he doesn’t know for sure.
The camera will leave no doubt this year.
In Kansas, bald eagles start laying eggs in February, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It takes about 35 days for the newborn to hatch.
The live feed, which can be found at bit.ly/2L0X73w, allows viewers to go back 12 hours, so anyone who missed out on the action can go back to view it.
The feed has more than 14,000 views, which is nowhere near the 21 million views from “Serenading the cattle with my trombone” — a self-describing 2014 video that helped propel Klingenberg’s YouTube channel to 143,000 subscribers — but the views jump when the eagles are present.
“Soon as the eagles show up, you wait a little bit, and the views go up,” he said. “I don’t know if they are communicating or what.”
This story was originally published January 29, 2021 at 8:50 PM.