Taken at Oakmulgee
MONTGOMERY-Golden Eagles are returning to their Alabama wintering grounds. This one (we don’t know “who” it is) is at Oakmulgee and others have landed at Freedom Hills WMA. We place road-killed deer and monitor them with cameras (and sometimes ready nets) to survey this species. This project is a great reminder of the importance of WMAs in providing habitat for nongame species.
Biologists banding ‘Coon Dog’, a golden eagle that was captured at Freedom Hills WMA in 2016
Alabama WFF has been monitoring golden eagles wintering in the state using game cameras and telemetry units since 2011, and all five of our tagged eagles have checked-in for the winter! Through “checking-in,” we are able to see where the birds are currently located, their migratory movements, and their previous summer breeding locations. While most of the birds are still on the move, Coosa, an eagle captured and tagged this past January, is already settled-in at her wintering grounds in the Talladega NF. We gain a lot of valuable data from the cellular transmitters that we use to tag the birds, and we recently received an animated flight of the movements of two of our tagged golden eagles on February 8, 2019. Coon Dog, captured in 2016 at Freedom Hills WMA, and Trace, captured this past January also at Freedom Hills WMA, at one point meet up in a thermal and throughout that day Trace traveled over 200 miles!
LEARN MORE
Media Release/Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources
