Now's your chance to name 3 baby eagles that hatched in Northern Virginia in March
Three baby eagles who’ve been growing up live on a webcam being watched across the world are in need of some names.
A naming contest for the Northern Virginia eaglets opened for public on Thursday. Those interested can submit their name suggestions, after which the best 10 among them will be put to a public vote.
The final names will be announced on June 1 by the Dulles Greenway, the group that runs the webcam livestreaming Rosa and Martin the eagles and their three babies, who hatched on separate days in March.
How does the contest work?
Name ideas can be submitted here through May 19. Once all names are submitted, the Dulles Greenway will whittled the down and the public will then get to vote on their favorites.
Fans area already submitting their ideas on the official form and for fun on the Facebook page dedicated to the eagle family.
One eagle fan suggested Huey, Dewey, and Louie, the Walt Disney ducks. Another suggested naming them after the Chipmunks, Alvin, Simon, and Theodore, or the Chipettes, Brittany, Jeanette, and Eleanor, depending on their sex.
The sex of the eaglets can't be known without a DNA test, said Terry Hoffman, a spokesman for the Dulles Greenway. Since that won't happen, the group suggests gender-neutral names.
Back when the eaglets hatched, many of their Facebook followers thought the two oldest eaglets should be called Pi and Patrick. The first was born on March 14, also known as Pi day because 3/14 corresponds with the mathematical symbol Pi, or 3.14. The second eaglet emerged on March 17, St. Patrick's Day.
Their youngest sibling was not born on a holiday.
More about the eagle family
The Dulles Greenway has been monitoring Rosa and Martin the eagles since the couple arrived to the nest in the fall of 2021. The cameras capturing their daily lives were installed between the 2021 and 2022 nesting seasons, and the couple have developed an online following since.
At any given moment, people all over the world are tuning in to watch the eagles. As the camera livestreamed the eaglets' birth in March, for instance, people were watching from Japan, Australia, Brazil, Russia, Spain, Finland and Canada, among others, said Hoffman said.
Rosa and Martin aren't first-time parents. Last year, the eagle cam captured the birth of their eaglet, named Orion following a similar public contest, and his departure from the nest a few months later.
Rosa and Martin are named after civil rights leaders Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. Students from Sterling Middle School in Sterling, Virginia, came up with the names and submitted them as part of another contest.
For now, Rosa and Martin's eaglets are known as DG3, DG4, and DG5, which stand for Dulles Greenway and the order in which they were hatched (Orion was originally DG1 and an eaglet that failed to hatch last year was DG2).
3 lucky eaglets
Eaglets grow extremely fast. Within just three months of being born, they are ready to fly and most will leave the nest for good.
Many eagles don't survive their first few days of life, with danger coming from predators, storms and even each other. Fans of the Dulles Greenway eagle family were worried not all three eaglets would survive infancy, which is why the naming contest is typically held a couple months after hatchings.
Eagle parents typically are extremely watchful and caring as their babies grow, bringing them food and scaring away any predators.
As each day has passed and the eagles continued to grow and thrive, their fan bas has grown steady each month, Hoffman said.
"Wow. Eaglets are getting big so fast!" one user wrote. And another: "Our sweet baby eaglets are turning into big teenagers."
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Naming contest opens for 3 Dulles Greenway eaglets hatched in Virginia
