Bird Cams Around the World

Great pictures Knorrie! I've never looked at this particular forum/cam before, and please pardon my ignorance, but what's with the big orange number on the side of the adults...I have never seen this before?

To understand why ... and how ... the eagles, on the Channel Islands off California, have wing tags, we have to go back in time .. to 1980 .. when the Bald Eagle Restoration Program started .... to reintroduce Bald Eagles to Santa Catalina Island.

The information for this introduction has been taken from a report, prepared by Dr Peter Sharpe and Jessica Dooley of the IWS, in 2001, for the US.Fish and Wildlife Service ... and it will explain why the eggs, even now, have to be removed and what ‘fostering’ really means and leads us into the ‘banding’ process when the eaglets are ‘issued’ with their ‘wingblings’

INTRODUCTION
In 1980, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the Institute for Wildlife Studies (IWS) initiated a program to reintroduce bald eagles to Santa Catalina Island, California.
Between 1980 and 1986, 33 eagles were released on the island from three different “hacking” platforms. While many of these birds matured and breeding pairs were established on the island, reproduction was not successful ... due to DDE levels ... these had been found to be inversely correlated with eggshell thickness.

Since 1989, the reintroduced population has been maintained through manipulations of eggs and chicks at each nest site and through additional hacking of birds.

Artificial eggs are substituted for the structurally deficient eggs laid by the birds affected by DDE. The adult eagles continue to incubate the artificial eggs while the removed eggs are relocated and artificially incubated at the Avian Conservation Center (ACC) at the San Francisco Zoo. Chicks that hatch from these removed eggs, or those produced by captive adults at the ACC or by wild birds, are then placed in the nests containing artificial eggs.

Continued hacking activities have also resulted in the release of an additional 19 eagles since 1991

Things have improved from those early days. Since 2005, the eggs removed from the nests, are now taken to the IWS' incubation facility, on Santa Catalina Island, and hatched there, instead of being sent to the SF Zoo. (Eliminating the travel to San Francisco has increased the hatching rate of the eggs by reducing the potential damage caused by the additional travel).
In 2007 two nests .. Pinnacle Rock and Seals Rocks ... were allowed to keep their eggs and both successfully hatched and fledged 2 eaglets each!

At the age of 8 weeks the IWS Team enter the nests and ‘band’ the eaglet/s ... these wingblings help to ID the eagles .. wherever they go.
The IWS monitor the movements of the eaglets through the radio transmitters in their back packs using traditional VHF telemetry.

Dr Sharpe .. Jun 9 2010, 10:40 AM wrote:
The next set of blood tests have returned and we estimated the sex correctly for 4 of 5 chicks. Both Pelican Harbor chicks are males (we banded A-69 as a female), K-09 (Rattlesnake) is a female, K-96 (Rattlesnake) is a male, and K-95 (Pinnacle Rock) is a female.