Local eagle within reach of Arctic Circle
A bird of prey caught near Rome has traveled within a bit more than a couple hundred miles of the Arctic Circle, and researchers hope to regain a signal as fall migration starts.
Researchers hope to regain the bird’s signal as fall migration starts.
Biologists with the U.S. Forest Service and West Virginia University are anxiously awaiting a new signal from a golden eagle that was caught on a ridge line just north of Rome in February and fitted with a transmitter to track its movement. The signal was lost when the eagle soared north toward the Arctic Circle in May.
Ruth Stokes, a biologist the Forest Service in Chatsworth said one of the reasons they are anxious to start receiving the signal again is that the transmitter pack, about the size of a deck of cards, is storing all sorts of data that it collects on a daily basis while it is out of the range. “It’ll just start spilling it all out,” Stokes said. “The unit has a solar panel that recharges itself, and it is able to store all kinds of data, from location to temperatures, wind speeds and all sorts of stuff.”
The bird was caught by a team of researchers from West Virginia University on Feb. 22. It was captured after it returned to a bait station on a ridge between Rome and Dalton. Road kill deer was used as bait for a two- to three-week period of time in January or February.
A trail camera was set up to record any activity, and once it was established the bird was coming to the bait repeatedly, a device called a rocket net was set up to capture the bird and allow researchers to take DNA samples and fit it with bands and a transmitter.
Stokes said it hung around the area where it was caught for a couple of days, then moved over to the Pigeon Mountain area in western Walker County for a week or so, before it started to head north through Tennessee and Kentucky. “It spent a long time in Missouri, then made a bee line for Canada,” Stokes said.
The signal was last picked up May 6 near Yellowknife in the Northwest Territory of Canada, about 250 miles south of the Arctic Circle.
The study is attempting to establish data for migratory patterns of golden eagles. Trish Miller, a wildlife biologist at West Virginia University, said the study started in 2005. The study started because of increasing wind-power development projects going in along Appalachian ridge tops.
Stokes said researchers were hoping the bird might take a different path from others that have been captured and fitted with transmitters along the Appalachian range.
Sure enough, it took a much more westerly route. “That was pretty exciting,” Miller said. “If it stayed in Canada, if it went to Alaska, it probably roamed around quite a bit. That’s what these
sub-adults do, they tend to roam around and look for nesting areas for subsequent years.”
Miller said in addition to developing information for the wind-power industry, there was also a major knowledge gap about golden eagles wintering in the southeast, the type of habitats they are using.
Miller said two golden eagles that have been captured in Georgia
near Manchester in the last couple of years have both followed more easterly migratory patterns. One flew up the Appalachians to a point in Quebec while the other has gone up into eastern Ontario.
Georgia released around 110 golden eagles from a site on Pigeon Mountain in the late 1980s and early ’90s. Miller said there are very sporadic nesting reports of the species in the Southeast. One pair nested in Walker County for a number of years and Miller said she was aware of another nest over the Cumberland River in north central Tennessee.