Hello Eagle Watchers,
April is almost upon us as I write this, and it is a beautiful, sunny, 60 degrees here: if I were an eagle, I would definitely be thinking about being home and starting my breeding cycle!

A Closer Look at Golden Eagle A20:
News for this week is another mover: golden eagle A20 has started north, and now appears to be in northern NY just below the St. Lawrence River. Looks like this bird left around 23 March, almost exactly the same day as last year!

Will eagle A20 follow the same patterns he did last year? What do we know about A20 (hint: how old?)?

Until next week, keep up that interest, preserve what's left of our open-spaces (and encourage your parents to also...), and do well in school! We need you to grow up and take charge and make sure we don't destroy our planet and all the wonderful living things in it!

Eagleye

Endangered Species Unit
Wildlife Diversity Group
Endangered Species Unit
Delmar, NY

Some interesting opportunities are ahead. We will be trying out some solar-powered satellite transmitters later this spring on some of our nestling eagles, and it is just possible, if there is adequate sun continuously recharging the batteries, that a unit could last for 5 years or more. This will be interesting to test. These units have small solar-cells right on top of the transmitter.

Since Eagleye Nye thinks that A00 may have arrived at her summer destination we can calculate how many days it took her this year. She headed out on around 3/5/04 and seems to be settled in on 3/24/04. How many days do you calculate this took? Did she migrate faster or slower this year?

Now that A20 has taken off we know that this bird’s migration started right around March 24 this year. Thanks for your predictions!

Thirty years ago eagles were on the edge of extinction caused by the pesticide DDT. Today's biggest threat to the Bald eagle is habitat destruction. According to Nye, each winter during the mid-winter aerial survey of New York more and more woodlands disappear. In a recent (winter 2004) New York Times interview about the New York eagle population, Eagleye Nye was quoted, "Their numbers are going through the roof," he said, "but the question now is whether, by 2050, the habitat they need is still going to be here to support them or will we keep whittling away at it so that the habitat disappears?"

What is being done? And, what can YOU do? Read on:

Once you have identified the location of a nest make some notes about the nesting sites. Consider some of the same questions the National Park Service is using to analyze Bald Eagle nesting sites:

Univ. of MN veterinary scientist Jan Shivers explains CWD graphically, "Prion proteins replicate themselves through a domino effect by touching another similar-acting normal protein in the animal's brain and changing its molecular configuration to abnormal. The reaction continues on and on... binding the proteins together like the zigzag pleats of an accordion, if you can picture that. The resulting reaction creates a nonfunctional space-occupying mass, like Alzheimer's plaques."

No Perfect Match-Up
She continues, "Fortunately for eagles, bird biochemistry is just enough UNLIKE mammals that many things do not correlate exactly. Meaning, they might have many similar DNA sequences of a protein, but not long enough of a string of 'like' amino acid sequences for the abnormal prion protein for matching up. So even if they ate abnormal brainstem tissue of an infected deer or elk, they probably would not come down with the disease, because it couldn't get a foothold on avian brain tissue."