Watch: Eaglets hatching, eagles protecting nest
The Web has a couple of new sudden high-flying stars.
A site streaming live video of a pair of bald eagles guarding their nest of newborns and awaiting the arrival of another has become the latest Internet sensation, with some 11 million views from 130 nations since the first egg was laid in late February.
The couple's first egg hatched Friday, the second on Sunday and, reports CBS News correspondent Terrell Brown, the third is expected to emerge any day now.
The bird's-eye-view comes from a grapefruit-sized camera nestled in their nest in Decorah, Iowa, some 100 miles northwest of Dubuque.
The family's every move inside the nest, some 80 feet high in a cotton tree, is captured 24/7 by the streaming video.
Over the weekend, says Brown, traffic became so heavy that the site briefly crashed while a second egg hatched and the eagles waited for No. 3 to emerge.
"These eagle cams touch many people in many different ways. ... I'm amazed," observes Bob Anderson, director of the Raptor Resource Project, which set up the camera.
But it's not just eagle cams, Brown notes. Last summer, streaming video of a Shiba Inu puppy cam garnered 26 million views, more than all of ESPN's online videos combined.
Experts say such high activity could mean overwhelming traffic that could clog the Internet.
But for now, Brown says, with 100,000 people watching this eagle family at any given moment, it looks like the Web will have to figure out how to keep up with nature's version of reality TV.