Tracked eagles continue to blaze trail for conservation
December 12, 2013
CCB Bald Eagle Tracking Success
December 13, 2013OK!! The solar battery powering the satellite transmitter Camellia is wearing has finally begun sending a signal again. For a week Dec 4 to Dec 11 the battery was too weak to let us know where Camellia was located. Looks like he sat in the sun long enough to juice up the battery. Very few data points but enough to know that after visiting Red Wing Golf Course he was on Granada Court in the Southern Woods neighborhood off Sandbridge Rd in Virginia Beach at 4:00pm yesterday. Follow the GREEN line. Click on maps to enlarge.
8 Comments
Map Day, let the sunshine! Hope you’ll stivk around for the holidays Cammy.
Thanks Reese.
Interesting – a small lake there but not much else. SO glad the transmitter got some extra juice!! Thanks, Reese.
Ooooh! Maybe a good day to visit the campground!
Lucky Camillia – found some sun to bask in! Thanks Reese for update.
Great to hear from you Cam..I hope this is the problem with NX’s transmitter haven’t heard from her in a while..everyone think..more sunshine please…! Thanks Reese for the update..
Thanks for the update, Reese. Good to see him back in my area again.
Terrific! Cam, glad you could report in and you are back in your home territory.
Reese, so if the transmitter were to fall off, ending up under a tree, in theory, they would lose power and it would look like it quit/ died. So do researchers usually try to field check last transmission (if feasible) to recover in case it is that simple of a problem?
Response – Maurina – Unless the battery was dead it would continue to transmit as long as the antenna was exposed. CCB has recovered a few transmitters. An example – Several years ago a Peregrine wearing a transmitter suddenly stopped sending a signal while sitting on a hack tower at Back Bay NWR. About six months later the signal appeared again. Shawn Padgett and I were able to locate the transmitter about two blocks from the hack tower. It was still attached to the harness which was around the bones of the Peregrine. Our guess as to what happened – a Great Horned Owl captured the Peregrine at night, ate the bird, dropped the remains on the ground with the antenna up-side-down. Six months later a raccoon, fox or other animal came along and flipped the antenna right-side-up and it began again to transmit a signal.
Libby Mojica and I searched the area that the last signal was transmitted from Azalea on March 17 this year, but did not locate the transmitter. It remains unknown as to exactly what happened, if anything, to Azalea. She was in the territory of another pair of bald eagles, but the harness with the transmitter may have fallen off into the Elizabeth River, or the battery may have just died. We don’t know.
Thanks! That is so interesting about the 6 month lapse then recovery, tho I am sorry for the Peregrine’s fate. Thanks, too, for checking for Azalea and her transmitter. (I was thinking about that in particular.)