ACNW Visit

My Audubon Center of the North Woods folks (see above) visited me last Sunday. I showed them the eagle center and went out to find some goldens. I had a blast!

A couple of them were SUPER sneaky and managed to hide a "gift" in my workspace. Since I am stuck with the tennis ball for the near future, I decided to put it to got use and let the eagles enjoy. Surprisingly, Donald interacted with it the most!

Was'aka and tennis ball

Donald investigating!

Bands

We had a dead eagle come into the center recently. What makes this eagle really special is that it was banded on both legs - it had both a federal band and a project band.

Certificate from the USGS for reporting the bands

Close up the bands

I reported the information to the federal bird banding laboratory of the USGS and got immediate results. The site told me all the information about this individual. Turns out it was banded in the UP of Michigan in 2000. I even got a little certificate. We cut the bands off the birds and are going to use them in education programs at work. We are also working on tracking down the folks that put the bands on the bird to see what the goal of the project was. Stay tuned!

Happy Valentines Day

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!

Here is Angel investigating her gift - tidbits of food hidden in an egg carton, then wrapped in a festive red bow. She seemed to enjoy it as it was quickly shredded!!

Golden Eagle Success!

What do people that work with eagles do on their time off? Try to find more eagles of course! I went Golden Eagle-ing again last week with Katie. We drove around using a road map that had the spots where the eagles like to hang out highlighted. We also had several spotting scopes, binoculars, camera's, GPS units and field guides. We were determined to find some this time around.

And, SUCCESS!

My little car did great on the back roads - even with an inch or so of fresh snow :)

Katie and I right after we found our first golden of the day!!

Golden in flight - notice how it looks like there is no head? That is one way to tell the goldens from the bald eagles!

One of the goldens we found perched :)

SUCCESS!

It was a great day. In total we found 10 golden eagles! I am now alot better at spotting these birds and identifying them. I'm super happy that I found these birds before they head to northern Canada for breeding season! We also found bald eagles, crows (several mobs), turkey, cooper's hawk, red-tailed hawks and a good variety of song birds. A great day of birding all around!