TV’s For The Birds In Eagle Country Of Rural Massachusetts Station A Hit Chronicling Life Of Proud Residents

Most of the time, television viewers in Turners Falls who switch on their local cable channel will see only a live shot of a bunch of sticks stuffed in the nook of a dead white pine.

But every now and again, without warning, a bald eagle - maybe two - flies into the picture, and the sticks become a nest.

Just as suddenly, Channel 6 and the riverside village are transformed.

“Bird on the nest! Bird on the nest!” shouts Carolyn Boardman, outdoor recreation director at the Conte National Fish & Wildlife Refuge, as a flurry of chairs are shoved away from desks at the refuge headquarters and folks jog to a front room for an intimate view of eagles via a 27-inch Panasonic.

People throughout this small river village are doing the same. When a bird is on the nest, Irene Kirk, 72, reaches for the phone and calls her friends. She has TVs in her kitchen and living room that keep her inches from the nest most of the day.

Ron Bosch, director of the local access channel, also is glued to the video screen as he pumps the signal to 10,000 homes. A man at the refuge headquarters is talking and gesturing at the TV, trying to coax the eagle to turn around. (The eagle, of course, is oblivious to his audience).

Town clerk John Zywna probably isn’t watching but does have a “box of doughnuts” bet that, once eggs are laid, they’ll be obscured by the nest and out of camera range.

The TV drama has been sporadic but intense. It climaxed last spring when the first televised batch of eagles’ eggs failed after the heavy snowstorm April 1. Some in town blamed the proximity of the camera. Condolence cards were sent to the refuge headquarters. People hunkered around TVs and mourned.

So as this winter ebbs before a new set of eggs are scheduled to be hatched next weekend, people are holding their emotions as they silently cheer for a pair they’ve named Milton and Mollie.

“Some people call and ask what the hell is this bunch of sticks on the TV screen,” Bosch said. “And there are people out there that are almost to the point of obsession over this. And you can watch leopards in Africa on the Dicovery Channel and not really connect to it. But here you’re looking at an eagle’s bedroom in your backyard, and if you want you can look out the window and see them fly around, and with that, the dynamic completely changes.”

With the exception of the local selectmen’s meeting or another televised event, the nest is broadcast daily on Channel 6, which has become known as the Eagle Channel.

At the Conte refuge headquarters, the feed is live day and night. Volunteers come for two-hour shifts and begin recording when something happens. There is already a 15-minute highlight tape, which includes a feast on a squirrel, the theft of the squirrel by crows and an off-camera cawing session that rocked the 5-foot-wide nest.

Ezekiel “Zeke” Jakub, 17, who is doing a lot of the volunteer tape dubbing and eagle watching, said his reaction upon first seeing the televised nest was, “Whoa, mama!”

The lovebirds first arrived in 1989, nesting on an island in Barton Cove in the town of Gill, which is across the Connecticut River from Turners Falls. It was an unusual place for eagles to come; the cove is a motorboat haven in spring and summer. Nonetheless, the pair stayed, one of just nine pairs of nesting bald eagles in the state and two of 76 eagles that wintered in Massachusetts this year - a new record.

Seven years later, wildlife officials had a brainstorm: Why not broadcast the goings-on of this unusual nest? In October 1996, Northeast Utilities, which owns the island where the nest sits, donated $2,000 for broadcast equipment. For years, company officials had helped broadcast the springtime flurry of the shad run up a local fish ladder. So why not broadcast the eagles?

“We don’t want people to sit on their couch and look at it,” said Robert F. Perry, manager of Western Massachusetts Electric’s Northfield Mountain Environmental and Recreation Center. “We want people to then get up and go outside and look at it.”

Bosch, who is thinking about broadcasting a local fox den and maybe even a field of wildflowers, said the channel is making a connection with the town.

“I can really sense in talking to people that it means something in their lives,” he said. “It has enhanced the quality of their lives. It radiates. What matters is that they’re talking about it. And I don’t want to take credit for it. The eagles have done it. We’re just a little cog in the machine.”