PORTLAND, Ore. -- Thousands of curious people watching on the KGW/Audubon Raptor Cam were eagerly still awaiting a third egg to hatch this weekend.

Last week the second raptor chick joined the nest.

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The second chick broke out around noon on Wednesday and the adult raptor stood up just long enough for Raptor Cam viewers to get a live peek at the miracle of nature.

Bob Sallinger, Conservation Director with the Audubon Society of Portland, said he knew there must be action in the nest before he even had a chance to take a look at the live cam on Monday because his e-mail inbox was flooded with messages.

Sallinger said the third egg was laid several days after the second egg so there may be a significant gap between the times they hatch.

But the first two chicks were late in hatching possibly due to the colder weather.

Viewers were also asking about how the chicks feed. Sallinger described a "crop," as a food storage pouch that is located near the top of the esophagus, which is how the parents cram quite a bit of food into the young each time there feed them. The crop expands as the birds eat and the food is stored there and then slow moves through the digestive system over the next couple of hours, Sallinger said.

Last week Sallinger saw that the first egg had hatched, because he had already noticed the signs that it was coming soon.

“The first break through to the outside world is known as 'pipping." The process of pecking its way out of the egg can take a day or two,” Sallinger explained in his Raptor Cam Blog on April 7th. “Chicks have a feature on their bill known as an "egg tooth" which allows them to break through the hard shell. They also have a special muscle on their neck known as a 'hatching muscle' that gives them the strength to accomplish this task. This muscle shrinks once the chick leaves the egg.”

“Both adult birds have been very actively inspecting their eggs while they have been sitting on the nest suggesting that perhaps there is movement and noise coming from them,” Sallinger said, just a few days before the first chick hatched.

The adult raptors have been taking turns sitting on their three eggs since the female laid each of the eggs sometime between March 6th and 12th. The Red-tails entered their “courtship” and “nest building” phase in February.

This is the third year in a row that KGW and the Audubon Society have partnered to provide viewers with an up-close view of this Red-tail hawk nest, located on a fire escape high on a downtown Portland office building.

Last year, the hawks laid three eggs around March 8 and three chicks hatched on April 16 but one later died after struggling with a deformity that prevented him from feeding.

Some local Red-tail hawks remain in the Portland Metro area year round. Other Red-tails migrate south for the winter and some migrate to Oregon from climates farther north.