Tracking Sea-eagles, Part 3
Posted at 3:15 pm April 3, 2008 by Mike McGrady
Photo credit: Natural Research, Ltd.
Read Mike’s previous blog, Tracking Steller’s Sea-eagles, Part 2…
As Steller’s sea-eagle #65632 continues her journey, we are continuing to track her movements. Well, #65632 has started her migration north (though, because of local geography, there has been no northerly component of the migration yet!). In mid-January, she moved back to the mainland of Hokkaido and spent a couple of weeks along the south coast of that island near Moraito. By the end of January, though, she had moved back into Russian territory on Rausu Island, and from early February until late March was hopping between there and the Shiretoko Peninsula on Hokkaido.
During that time (March 8, 2008) a professional photographer, Gaku Tozuka, who is in contact with our colleagues in Japan, took a picture of this eagle on the Shiretoko Peninsula. His photos clearly show the antenna from the transmitter and the coded color band (5H) we fitted to the eagle as a nestling. (The Shiretoko Peninsula is famous for the Steller’s sea-eagles that winter there, although the concentration of eagles has lessened in the last 20 years as numbers of sika deer have increased elsewhere on Hokkaido, and the amount of fish available to eagles near Shiretoko has, perhaps, decreased.)
On March 29, #65632 made her first move away from her wintering ground and was about 120 km (90 miles) west. Fingers crossed and goggles down, let’s hope for the best and see where she goes now! Just to remind you, this bird was marked as a nestling in 2006. She spent her first winter on islands northwest of Hokkaido and the subsequent summer on Sakhalin Island, right in among the oil and gas development. In autumn 2007, she made an excursion to the northern tip of Sakhalin, then thought better of it and headed south to Hokkaido. In mid-November, she hopped from Hokkaido to the southernmost Kuril Islands (Russia), where she spent part of her second winter.
Dr. Mike McGrady is a researcher with Natural Research Limited, partnered with the San Diego Zoo.
Here’s more information about the Steller’s sea-eagle project.
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April 3rd, 2008 at 5:43 pm
Wonderful series on tracking the sea eagles. Unrelated, but I would love an update on the baby bonobos, Mali and Tuta Penda, born last fall and being reared in the zoo nursery. Every time I visit, they are ” visiting their family” in an off-viewing enclosure.
Moderator’s note: According to one of their nursery keepers, Tuta is teething (his molars are coming in and he is grumpy!). Both are doing well with their bonobo family yet still enjoy time with their human caregivers. As long as they are being held, they don’t care who it is!! Even though Mali is older, Tuta is now slightly larger with a stocky build, just like his father. The youngsters spend most of the day with the bonobos, returning to the nursery in the Children’s Zoo at night.
April 18th, 2008 at 6:57 am
What a wonderful series. If I could go back in time and had my druthers about me, I would be working right beside you wonderful people. Thanks for taking care of all God’s creatures both great and small.
Sincerely,
Doc Posh