Each year in September, The Raptor Center at the University of Minnesota releases a small number of rehabilitated birds back to the wild at Carpenter St. Croix Valley Nature Center in Hastings, Minnesota. While a few thousand spectators come out to observe the release and see education birds including bald eagles, great horned owls and kestrels up-close, it’s not often that the audience gets to learn what happens in the days, weeks and months following.
Did the bird make it? Did it fall prey to another urban landscape challenge such as a chimney, window or methane burner? Or is the bird we saw fly free in good health, hunting and soaring over the plains?
For one bird released in July, there was a rare opportunity to find out.
A bald eagle found injured in a roadside ditch along Highway 68 near Cambria, Minnesota in October 2013 was brought into The Raptor Center for care. The eagle was wearing both a numbered federal leg band and a satellite tracker upon arrival. An examination by The Raptor Center co-founder and director emeritus, Patrick Redig, D.V.M., revealed a broken leg and pelvis. The eagle was treated for the fractured leg and pelvis, and also given replacement feathers through a process known as “imping”, where new feathers are fitted into hollow feather shafts and glued into place, using a piece of bamboo as a connector.
Redig suspected that bird may have come from the Sutton Avian Research Center at the University of Oklahoma. A bird band and phone call confirmed this, revealing the bird’s history.
“The eagle had originally been banded by us on April 16, 2012 in Wagoner County, Oklahoma,” shared Steve Sherrod, Ph.D., executive director of the Sutton Center, “and is known as the Jackson Bay female.”
When the bird was released by The Raptor Center near Carpenter Nature Center in July 2014, a new device and information from partners at the Sutton Center allowed continued tracking of the bird. She can be seen as recently as last week near Missouri-Oklahoma border on the Sutton Center’s eagle tracking webpage.
The Sutton Center has successfully carried out a major reintroduction program of bald eagles from 1984 to more recently in the southeastern United States, and specifically Oklahoma. The Jackson Bay female was part of the restoration effort, and was first hatched in 2012. Today more than 150 nests exist in the state, up from fewer than 10, assistant director of the center Lena Larsson recently told Public Radio Tulsa.
Learn more about the Jackson Bay female and the Sutton Center’s eagle population work in this Public Radio Tulsa story, or watch a video on how imping works here.
The Raptor Center at the University of Minnesota’s Michelle Willette, D.V.M., M.P.H., fits a satellite tracker on the Jackson Bay female.
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