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JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. (WJHL) — Two days after Johnson City eagles Boone and Jolene welcomed their first eaglet of the year, the man who built their nest reflected on his involvement in their lives.
The first eaglet of the year, JC25, hatched in the new nest that Brandon Bragg built after Hurricane Helene destroyed the eagles’ previous home. Bragg reported that Boone, Jolene and JC25 “are all doing well.”
Bragg said the nest built on his triangular platform would be a safe place for Boone and Jolene to raise JC25.
“They want to do what we want to do,” he said. “They just want to have a house and feed their kids. And they have the same things we do. They have owls trying to get in and raccoons tearing up the nests and snakes and everything, and they have to overcome it just like we do.”
Bragg shared with News Channel 11 the dedication that has kept the duo on screen for the past nine years.
Although he doesn’t have to fend off predators, Bragg’s setup sometimes requires him to join Boone and Jolene up in the trees.
“We’ve had a lot of different things that we’ve had to overcome,” he said. “Power issues, it’s hardwired in. It’s not a remote camera. So we have wires going 100 feet up into that tree. And we actually had one camera that’s in a different tree, [it is] in a hickory tree that points down. So we get a different-angle shot. It would be Camera 2. That camera is on a 20-foot pole, and the poles started to collapse. And they had me, they said, ‘Well, we’re going to have to repair the pole. And that was one very intricate 100 feet up. And I’m on a hickory limb about the size of a baseball bat. And what I ended up doing is I took a sailboat mast, a little Catalina 22 sailboat mast, the aluminum extrusion, and put the camera on there. And that’s been a good success and it’s working beautifully.”
In their first year on camera, Boone and Jolene garnered 9 million views on East Tennessee State University’s Eagle Cameras.