While children all over are looking forward to next weekend's Easter egg hunts, there are a lot of kids and grown-ups who are fascinated with different eggs; bald eagle eggs.

In late December 2014 a webcam was set up on a bald eagle nest in Hanover. The eagle cam is a joint project of the Pennsylvania Game Commission, HDOnTap and Comcast Business.Connie Ward of Jim Thorpe is one of more than a million people who view the webcam online."I watch every day on and off," Ward said. "If I could have it on my TV I would. I love watching them. I've learned so much about them by just watching and following all of the chats on that site."Bald eagles lay their eggs around the same time each year depending on their location.The further north the nest is located the later they will mate and lay eggs. A typical clutch size is one to three eggs with the average being just over two.On Feb. 14 the female inhabitant of the nest laid an egg, followed by another three days later.In most cases bald eagle eggs take 35 days to hatch, but the tending of the eggs was just as interesting to many. The male and female take turns sitting on the eggs not only to keep them warm, but to also protect them from predators.Part-time Jim Thorpe resident Annette Sanders learned about the eagle cam when a link popped up in her Facebook newsfeed."Out of a combination of love of nature and plain old curiosity, I logged on a few times just to get a close-up glimpse of eagles," Sanders said."Once the eggs were laid I logged in more often, about every other evening just to watch them."In the early morning hours of March 24, the first egg hatched, then the second eaglet freed itself the next day."Unfortunately, both eggs hatched on a weekday while I was at work, so I didn't get to see the actual hatching," Sanders said. "Each night when I got home from work I log in to the webcast to watch the adorable little eaglets!"In all, the game commission says people collectively spent nearly 5 million hours viewing the eagle cam. What's the attraction?"There are birds, and then there are eagles," says Jeannie Carl, naturalist at the Carbon County Environmental Center."They're our national bird. Nothing flies like an eagle, the way they soar," she added. "I work with them every day and it's still nothing like seeing them in the wild. They are just so beautiful and powerful."People can watch an eagle close to home at the environmental center in Summit Hill.Rennie, the bald eagle who resides at the Carbon County Environment Education Center, started laying eggs back in 2011. Because she has never been with a male her eggs are not fertile, but it doesn't stop her from protecting them and attempting to incubate her eggs, or in this case proxy eggs.Because of U.S. Fish and Wildlife regulations the eggs must be removed and destroyed. When the center removes the eggs they replace them with cue balls in a nest that the center's naturalist Franklin Klock builds. Rennie will then sit on the "eggs" for up to 2 weeks through all kinds of weather."Just like the eagles on the webcam when it snowed she never moved," Klock said.Visit the environmental center or check out the eagle cam at:

http://hdontap.com/index.php/video/stream/bald-eagle-live-cam.