[TN-Bird] TWRA captures four Golden Eagles on cameras statewide in winter project.

From: "Wallace Coffey" <jwcoffey@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: "TN-birds" <tn-bird@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "Bristol-birds" <bristol-birds@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2012 09:32:50 -0400




















 Photo of a Golden Eagle at a deer carcass by Todd Eastin, one of four in 
Tennessee project.

The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency has completed its camera capture 
program to monitor for wintering Golden Eagles in the Volunteer State this 
year.  This valuable project, conducted throughout the mountainous areas of the 
Blue Ridge and Cumberlands, has helped fill in highly-important gaps in our 
knowledge of the eagles.

Researchers in the Southern Appalachian area had suspicion that few Golden 
Eagles winter in the mountains of East and Middle Tennessee.  TWRA data was 
successful in testing this hypothesis.  

The state's efforts reveal that, in fact, there are extremely few Golden Eagles 
wintering in the areas of the state where TWRA placed monitoring cameras.

TWRA's associated camera sites were successful in documenting four (4) Golden 
Eagles by capturing just 14 eagle-visit  photos at sites which had deer 
carcasses placed in front of cameras in six counties - Carter, Unicoi, 
Campbell, Monroe, Meigs and Johnson.  

One of the sites was in Shady Valley and operated by Bristol Bird Club members 
Todd and Lynn Eastin.  Their lone photo of a Golden Eagle coming to their bait 
site at Marriage Ground Ridge on 2 Feb 2012 was one of the four eagles known to 
have been photographed in the state program and collected by TWRA.  

This is the second year that the Eastins have been successful with a camera. 
The East Tennessee Golden Eagle Group, organized and operated by the Bristol 
Bird Club, made history on 22 Feb. 2011, when the Eastin photographed a Golden 
Eagle on Iron Mountain in Shady Valley, TN -- Johnson County.  

Working with Gabby Lynch (then Gabby Call) of The Nature Conservancy, they 
established two site for the East Tennessee Golden Eagle Group and began 
monitoring in the mountains of Northeast Tennessee on 17 Feb of last year. 

In December 2010, the Bristol Bird Club established its Clinch Mountain Golden 
Eagle Group to study eagles in Southwest Virginia. BBC members made thousands 
of digital images of an estimated 15 or more Golden Eagles and a Bald Eagle on 
Clinch Mountain in Russell County of Southwest Virginia.  Dave Worley and Tom 
Hunter conducted most of the BBC field work, photocapturing an estimated 15 
Golden Eagles. Wallace Coffey coordinates the project for the club.
The Clinch Mountain team captured 28,000 photographs of a variety of wildlife.  
But at least 3,000 of their photos were of Golden Eagles in Russell County 
alone.

Tom Hunter originally thought maybe 15 Golden Eagles were wintering in Russell 
County but, at the end of the project, believed the number is maybe 20 to 25 
and that was with just one camera operated most days on only a handful of sites 
in Russell County.



Several of the BBC photographs had more than one Golden Eagle.  Hunter and 
Worley got a series of photos where two Golden Eagles fought over a deer 
carcass, only to have an immature Bald Eagle show up to watch and eventually 
drive the Goldens away and capture the prize for itself.  The Bald Eagle had a 
satellite telemetry tracking system worn on its back and held with a harness.  
It had been captured and equipped not far away on the Clinch Mountain by state 
biologists.



In another dramatic discovery, the BBC Clinch Mountain group managed to 
photograph an immature Golden Eagle being fed pieces of meat picked from a deer 
carcass by an adult Golden Eagle and passed beak to beak by the adult to the 
young.  There are no previous records of such behavior on the wintering grounds.



In addition to the valuable eagle data, last year's BBC project in Russell 
County also captured a black coyote and a "coywolf" which West Virginia 
researchers believe is a hybrid between an Eastern Timber Wolf and a coyote.  
They also got photos of Spotted Skunks and a series in which a Spotted Skunk 
stood down a Bobcat in a face-to-face encounter.  Not only where there many 
photos of Bobcats but also a series where a female Bobcat brought two of her 
kittens to a deer carcass to feed.



These projects are excellent examples of how amateur ornithologists and 
government science employees can team to produce valuable understanding of bird 
populations as well as how best to manage for some species.



Wallace Coffey

Bristol, TN
[TN-Bird] TWRA captures four Golden Eagles on cameras statewide in winter project.

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