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“Because great stories should be...experienced.”
Excerpt from “E-mailing Eagles”
On the Mountain Magazine
By Koren Wetmore
You know the world's gone high-tech when eagles send e-mail. Yet bird messages are commonplace for Janet Linthicum, a research associate with the Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group. Each day Linthicum receives up to 20 electronic notes from 13 bald eagles that she’s tracking on their migration routes from California to nest sites up north. Two of the eagles are among the 30 that winter in the San Bernardino Mountains.
“We always knew the birds went north, but before the study, nobody knew how far they went,” Linthicum says. An adult tracked from Silverwood Lake this year flew 2,000 miles to nest along the Great Slave Lake in Canada’s Northwest Territories. An immature eagle tagged here last year prefers to summer along the Athabasca River in Central Alberta, Canada.
The technology behind the birds is as amazing as their travel plans. Unlike their peers, the studied eagles wear a backpack that houses a transmitter. About the size of a matchbox, the 70-gram pack equals two percent of the bird’s body weight. Its straps leave room for wing movement and are designed to wear out in about three years (the approximate lifespan of the transmitter). “They don’t seem to notice it’s there,” Linthicum says. “They preen the feathers under and around it.”
Signals from the pack are picked up by several satellites, which calculate and feed data on the bird’s location to a computer in Seattle. The computer then relays the information via e-mail...
Full text available for editors upon request.
“We always knew the birds went north, but before the study, nobody knew how far they went,” Linthicum says. An adult tracked from Silverwood Lake this year flew 2,000 miles to nest along the Great Slave Lake in Canada’s Northwest Territories. An immature eagle tagged here last year prefers to summer along the Athabasca River in Central Alberta, Canada.
The technology behind the birds is as amazing as their travel plans. Unlike their peers, the studied eagles wear a backpack that houses a transmitter. About the size of a matchbox, the 70-
Signals from the pack are picked up by several satellites, which calculate and feed data on the bird’s location to a computer in Seattle. The computer then relays the information via e-
Full text available for editors upon request.
