PORTLAND (AP) – A pair of eagles has failed to hatch their eggs in a Hancock County tree in an effort that has been captured by a 24-hour camera that streams video onto the Internet.

Biologists on Tuesday declared the nesting attempt a failure after confirming there weren’t any eggs in the nest, said Wing Goodale, research biologist with BioDiversity Research Institute in Gorham.

The institute last year installed a camera 70 feet up in the tree and recorded the eagles laying and hatching three eggs. People from around the world watched over the Internet during the laying, hatching and fledgling process.

It was the 12th consecutive year that the eagles had successfully hatched their eggs in the same nest.

This year, the eagles laid their first egg on March 5 and are believed to have laid at least one other egg, Goodale said.

Biologists were waiting for the first egg to hatch on Monday, but when that didn’t happen they became concerned that the effort had failed.

On Tuesday, their fears were confirmed when an aerial survey take over the weekend showed that the nest was empty.

The eggs could have failed to hatch because of the extreme cold conditions in early March when they were laid, Goodale said.

“The day they laid their egg was the coldest day of winter,” he said.

The eagles have continued to exhibit nesting behavior, Goodale said, and there is an outside chance that they may be gearing up for another round of nesting.

But re-nesting in the wild is very rare, he said.

BioDiversity Research Institute is now preparing to install a camera that is fixed on a loon nest in midcoast Maine. This will be the fifth year the loon camera will be in operation, sending video to viewers over the Internet.

Before the eagle camera went up in January 2006, the BioDiversity Research Web site was getting about 1,500 visitors a month, Goodale said.

This year it has gotten an average of 15,000 visitors daily and up to 60,000 a day, Goodale said.

Goodale is also hoping to install a camera at a peregrine falcon nest if he can raise funding to operate it.