An eagle in the nest near Sidney takes care of its eaglet. (Hancock Wildlife Foundation)

An overdue bald eagle egg finally hatched early Wednesday morning on a nest high up a tree near Sidney on Vancouver Island, a biologist said.

The eagle nest has been monitored by a pair of webcams installed by the Hancock Wildlife Foundation, which promotes the conservation of wild habitats through science and education.

"I got to see this morning for the first time the little chick holding its head up," foundation spokesman David Hancock said Wednesday.

"Some people called me at daylight to say. 'Oh, it's hatched, it's hatched,' so I assume it probably hatched last night."

The organization has set up webcams to monitor three nesting pairs of bald eagles on the south coast of the province. One of them is in Delta, where the eaglets were overdue by four days.

"The likelihood of them hatching this late is not good," Hancock said of the Delta nest.

"Somewhere in this process, things haven't quite worked out, but it's a learning process for all creatures," he said.

The most famous nest is on Hornby Island, off the east coast of Vancouver Island, where a webcam first began broadcasting activity in the nest in 2005. The webcast attracted 10 million viewers a day worldwide at the time.