Golden Eagles 1
For more photos, please click the above image.
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A golden eagle soars through the Allegheny Front Hawk Watch, a mountaintop watch site near Central City, Pennsylvania. Over 150 eagles migrate through the site every fall. Pennsylvania's Ridge-and-Valley region, just east of the Front, is a major migration route for eagles and other large raptors.
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An aerial photo of the Laurel Mountain Wind Project, northwest of Elkins West Virginia, is a good illustration of the ridge-top wind facilities that are proliferating throughout the Ridge-and-Valley region, posing a potential problem to raptor migration.
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Starting in late winter, Trish Miller and her team set up camera traps baited with deer carcasses. When an eagle lands and takes the bait, it is netted, blood-tested for lead and mercury, and fitted with a small telemetry unit designed by Miller's husband, Michael Lanzone, before being released. Here Miller and Lanzone measure an eagle's wings with a yardstick.
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Miller and Lanzone measure a golden eagle's footpad. Footpad size can be used to determine the bird's sex, although Miller relies more on DNA analysis.
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Michael Lanzone checks the fit of a golden eagle's telemetry unit before release. The unit is attached with nonabrasive Teflon ribbon, and fits the bird like a small backpack.
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A golden eagle ascends after release, wearing a telemetry unit designed by wildlife biologist Michael Lanzone. The unit collects data on its location every 30 seconds. The half-minute interval allows for close tracking.
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Over the past three springs, Miller and her colleagues have followed 21 golden eagles, collecting 18,000 data points to pinpoint flight paths and habitats. From these, Miller created fine-grained GIS maps of individual migration routes between eastern Quebec, where the birds spend the summer, and Virginia and West Virginia, where most of them winter.
