[TN-Bird] Re: exceedingly rare oddity-- TWRA's enormous opportunity
- From: "Bates E." <wgpu239@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: csloan1973@xxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2012 12:14:45 -0400
Excellent points, Chris. Thanks for sharing them.
Bates Estabrooks
Anderson County
On Jul 16, 2012 11:53 AM, "Chris Sloan" <csloan1973@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I'll add one comment to this. While this is certainly interesting news, I
> would hate to see TWRA (again) waste valuable time and money on the issue
> of breeding Golden Eagles. The nearest breeding population is 700+ miles
> away, and there is scant evidence (nothing more than vague anecdotes) that
> this species was ever a native breeding species in Tennessee in the modern
> era, notwithstanding TWRA's prior (and very misguided in my opinion)
> efforts to "reintroduce" (actually "introduce") the species to the state.
> In my opinion, given the facts we have available, this fledgling is highly
> likely to be a byproduct of those efforts. Certainly the bird should be
> cared for and hopefully released, but beyond that, expediture of any of our
> desperately limited non-game dollars on this bird is, in my opinion, a
> tragic waste, when we have so many much more important issues that are
> already starved for funding.
>
> The wintering Golden Eagles are a bit of a different story, and in my
> opinion that side of the equation definitely merits further study and
> conservation effort.
>
> Chris Sloan
> Nashville, TN
> http://www.chrissloanphotography.com
>
>
> On Sun, Jul 15, 2012 at 8:30 PM, Wallace Coffey <jwcoffey@xxxxxxxxxx>wrote:
>
>> **
>> Here we stand at the doorstep to ornithological history !
>>
>> Putting an exceedingly rare oddity of getting our hands on a fledgling Golden
>> Eagle in perspective, in Tennessee, is astounding.
>>
>> It seems like when Scott Somershoe, Polly Rooker and an unnamed wildlife
>> officer from the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency shared what they have
>> been very busy with, there should have been hundreds of us with Skype
>> technology standing to give them a thunderous ovation.
>>
>> But maybe that is premature. Maybe they have not yet come to the best
>> part of their story and we are waiting breathlessly to hear the grand plan
>> and news.
>>
>> We hope we'll all see a satisfying sample of a ton of
>> well-crafted digital photos of the bird, it being delivered, identified,
>> diagnosed, treated and released. The results from the images being
>> flashed electronically to the best Golden Eagle minds available in at least
>> eastern North America. To learn how the experts affirmed and confirmed
>> anything and everything known about this juvenile and fledgling aging of
>> this Golden Eagle. The US Fish & Wildlife has said a fledgling is a
>> juvenile that has taken the first flight from the nest, but is not yet
>> independent.
>>
>> At least we will be excited to know how many weeks of age this fledgling
>> is and what sex the bird is. The protocols and standards are well known.
>> Sex is important because males and females have different tendencies to
>> wander.
>>
>> We are going to be amazed at how much TWRA has done during the past two
>> weeks the bird has been in captivity and while Somershoe has been up to his
>> elbows in diapers with his own fledgling which he has been helping care for
>> at home.
>>
>> It will be a thrill to see the names of all the advisors who have been
>> pulled into a quick response team to help guide TWRA thru these and
>> the pending, crucial, research opportunities that may not come our way
>> again for decades, if ever.
>>
>> This fledgling Golden Eagle, found near Cordell Hull Lake, in
>> upper Middle Tennessee, is going to be a data bonanza.
>>
>> Todd Katzner, Bob Hatcher, Jeff Cooper, Trish Miller, Al Cecere and Dave
>> Buhler are the kinds of names we'll be hearing about. Cecere and guys like
>> Buhler probably all have shared excellent input about how to go quickly
>> high on the mountain with this opportunity. Hatcher was a TWRA non-game
>> and eagle guy years ago when that was a good thing.
>>
>> What they may already have in the works is a checklist of to-dos which
>> we'll see unfolding before our eyes within weeks if not months:
>>
>> -- first is all the simple documentation mentioned above but also
>> probably the DNA samples which may tell us things our minds might never
>> have imagined. That probably goes without saying.
>>
>> -- not only will this bird be a public spectacle and public relations
>> coup for TWRA but it will carry another first. The first Golden Eagle
>> fledgling from this southern region to every go aloft carrying one of the
>> sexy and data-dumping, non-invasive, monitoring scheme of a novel
>> high-frequency GPS-GSM telemetry systems for tracking Golden Eagles among
>> other migratory birds. It uses solar -powered transmitters and
>> cellphone transmissions to relay satellite track data every few minutes or
>> even every few seconds as needed. It was designed by Katzner's company,
>> Cellular Tracking Technologies LLC. There are Golden Eagles transmitting
>> data with these systems over much of North America and even their breeding
>> areas in Canada. But maybe never ever from a fledgling Golden Eagle from
>> our southern region.
>>
>> -- for the first time we will know about any survival and what it
>> does for the next several years before it is old enough to breed. Does it,
>> too, breed in the region ? Is it part of a breeding population of Golden
>> Eagles we have known little about? Was it from a population that nest on
>> high elevation cliff faces or artificial structures or even in Tennessee
>> trees ?
>>
>> -- will the tracking of this bird lead us back to its parents or even
>> near the nest where it was fledged ? Will we learn if it can't survive or
>> does not survive this first winter ? Where will it winter ? Will we know
>> the transmission signal has not moved for days and go to find it downed
>> again ? Can it once again be nursed back to health and make another try ?
>> Or do we simply retrieve the transmitter to be used another day by whomever
>> wants to own it and burry the carcass and end this adventure ?
>>
>> -- as a fledgling, it may have been within a few short miles of where
>> it hatched or actually within sight of the nest when TWRA picked it up.
>> Will tracking lead us to where it roosts and what preference there is for a
>> Tennessee roost site ?
>>
>> -- will we learn that TWRA has plans to bait the site with dead deer
>> carcasses this winter and affix cameras to monitor all around this area
>> with several such cameras and baitings ? Will we not only get wildlife cam
>> photos of the parents but also of this bird feasting at one of the
>> carcasses ? Will we find out there are a dozen Golden Eagles are more in
>> that vicinity ? The Bristol Bird Club's Clinch Mountain Golden Eagle group
>> determined with such a set up that we had 15 Golden Eagles wintering in
>> just one small part of Russell County, VA a year ago.
>>
>> -- will we soon find out that TWRA is following the same approach that
>> the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries has been busy at for
>> the past few winters by capturing those birds with a rocket net and
>> placing the Katzner-design satellite tracking units on them ? Then
>> we will know if our nesting birds are a sedentary couple that does not
>> migrate but stays in the area? Will we even learn, as Virginia and others
>> have than wintering birds wander over a large area that may include
>> hundreds of miles of regular winter travel around the area ? Will this
>> fledgling or other tracked adults wander off into the Cumberland's for a
>> few weeks or wherever ? And, with tracking units, find where they are
>> nesting and watch next year's nest to see if more fledglings survive into
>> the wilds of Tennessee ?
>>
>> -- will we learn that this is the first step in allowing TWRA to help
>> guide the placement of wind turbines on our mountain tops and protect our
>> wintering Golden Eagles and Bald Eagles ?
>>
>> -- it was not like Somershoe needed to leaves messages and try to
>> introduce himself to Katzner with babbling baby eagle talk. Scott is a
>> member of Katzner's prestigious Eastern Golden Eagle Working Group which is
>> based out of the University of West Virginia. Scott has been working in
>> collaboration with biologists and wildlife managers from the **US** and *
>> *Canada **dedicated to developing a more complete understanding of
>> Golden Eagle life history and ecology throughout eastern **North America*
>> *.
>>
>> -- Katzner has recently been to Canada to see for himself where and
>> what was going on with a Golden Eagle found injured in New York state and
>> sent back to the wild with one of his hi-tech telemetry units. It was an
>> amazing research effort and it was fascinating what he learned.
>>
>> -- Jeff Cooper is also a member of that team. He is a Tennessee Tech
>> University graduate who is working with Golden Eagle telemetry for the
>> Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. He probably has more
>> than two dozen satellite-tracked Golden Eagles in Canada right now which he
>> trapped in western Virginia during winter and is studying them. In early
>> 2010, Cooper and his colleagues captured four Golden Eagles here and
>> outfitted them with GPS transmitters. All four headed north by mid-April
>> and then spent the breeding season on the Ungava Peninsula in northern
>> Quebec. Cooper gets back to Cookeville every now and then and was there
>> not long ago -- just a few miles down the road from where the fledgling was
>> picked up by TWRA. Cooper is one of Katzner's important Golden Eagle
>> guys. They recently spent time this early summer in the western part of
>> the country with Cooper climbing to many Golden Eagle nests. He can smell
>> the air and tell you the age of a fledgling.
>>
>> -- Katzner-type satellite tracking units probably will cost only
>> about $2,500 at the present. Surely, all of these excellent biologists who
>> feed at the trough of many hundreds of thousands if not a combined million
>> dollars worth of research have responded to TWRA about how and where to
>> fetch one on the spur of the moment. If this fledgling Golden Eagle does
>> not make it more than a few days back in the wild, then there is a good
>> opportunity to get the unit back and cash it in to whomever sold it to TWRA
>> --but all of that has probably been thought thru very carefully. Even what
>> computer system could be used to download the tracking of this bird. We'll
>> probably learn that TWRA plans do that in downtown Nashville.
>>
>> -- hopefully, down the road, we will learn that Virginia can help
>> Tennessee learn how to quickly get going with Golden Eagle trapping during
>> the winter if we then know where eagles can be found. Of course that is
>> depending on how much time guys like Cooper can spare while working at goal
>> of trapping and putting transmitters on 90 Bald Eagles on a military base
>> in eastern Virginia starting this winter.
>>
>> Perhaps the Tennessee Ornithological Society has been asked for emergency
>> approval to fund the transmitter for $2,500. It would be one of the good
>> things they do on a rainy day with a rainy day
>> bank account surplus.
>>
>> Just can't wait......
>>
>> Wallace Coffey
>> Bristol, TN
>>
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>> **
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