Destination Eagle

 

Methods

Climb to the Nest

Prior to accessing nest sites we contact landowners or volunteer nest monitors to confirm nest activity and request permission to visit and access the nest.

Once all the safety lines are in place, he begins to climb.

As the climber approaches the top of the nest, he slows his approach to ensure the birds will not pre-maturely jump from the nest. He then uses his "eagle stick" to gently pull the bird towards the edge of the nest. Once the eaglets are near the edge of the nest, he secures the bird and places it in the holding sack, and then lowers the bird to the ground crew.

 

Banding

The eaglet is carefully removed from the bag and held by an experienced handler. One person restrains the bird as the other performs a series of measurements. The bird is placed on its back and its head is covered with a hood. These procedures reduce stress on the bird and create a safer work environment for the field team.

Once all measurements are taken, the bird receives two bands (one on each leg). One is an alphanumeric band (white on black) and the other is an aluminium federal band.

After banding is complete, 10 ml of blood are taken from each bird to test for levels of organochlorines (e.g, PCB, DDE) in the eaglets. Three breast feathers are also removed to test for the presence of heavy metal contaminants such as lead and mercury. Blood samples are then sent to the Canadian Wildlife Service National Wildlife Research Centre in Ottawa for processing.

 

Transmitter Deployment

After these tasks are complete, most birds are immediately returned to the nest. However, some eagles will also be outfitted with satellite transmitters to allow their movements to be tracked.

Birds are fitted with a platform transmitter terminal (PTT), which the bird wears like a back-pack. This technique has been studied and tested in the field and has no adverse effect on life behaviours (Buehler et al. 1995). The transmitter is affixed to the bird with teflon ribbon, which act like the straps of a backpack. The teflon ribbon is gathered together and sewn at a single point on the bird's sternum so that in the event the stitching does fall apart, the back pack transmitter will fall off all at once. It is estimated that the unit will drop off the bird in 4-5 years.

Every five days, data are emailed to our office from ARGOS out of Maryland. The data are received as a text file, which is then converted into a format suitable for mapping. Only the most accurate locations are used for mapping and all aberrant locations are excluded.

Our PTTs were purchased from Northstar Science and Technology.