It was a breezy day in late March 2025 when Kathleen Moreo carried a male juvenile Bald Eagle into the center of a area in Osceola County and launched it, a light-weight GPS backpack in tow. As donors to a brand new research on eagle motion, Kathleen and her husband Jim got entry to a dashboard exhibiting them every “ping” of the eagle’s backpack, permitting them to trace the chicken in actual time by his first yr and past. The info gives uncommon perception into one Bald Eagle’s day-to-day life and begins to reply questions on eagle migration and socialization within the early years.
Spring and Summer season
Bald Eagle affected person 2025-0085 arrived on the Audubon Heart for Birds of Prey’s Raptor Trauma Clinic in February 2025 after falling from his nest on a utility pole as a chick. It was too harmful to return him to the nest, so as soon as he was cleared of accidents, the Heart’s staff scheduled his launch in an space with a big inhabitants of Bald Eagles that might act as a surrogate household as he discovered to outlive on his personal. For launch, the staff fitted him with a light-weight GPS backpack, a silver federal ID band on one leg, and a black ID band on his different leg, denoting he hatched from a nest on a human-made construction.
Due to the GPS tracker, we all know precisely the place 2025-0085 went after launch: He started exploring Central Florida, heading farther west till reaching Honeymoon Island. From there, he launched into his first migration up the Atlantic Flyway, settling in Quebec, Canada for the summer season. With out a GPS tracker, knowledge assortment like this may solely be attainable if he have been noticed in every location, along with his ID band seen and readable, and finders who felt motivated to report the sightings. With all this knowledge at their fingertips, the Moreos appeared ahead to fall migration, when 2025-0085 would hopefully return to Florida.
Fall
Round Halloween, 2025-0085’s monitoring knowledge confirmed him again in Florida, not removed from the place the Moreos dwell. Kathleen volunteers with Audubon’s EagleWatch program, monitoring nests in Palm Seashore County, and when she realized 2025-0085 flew to the identical space as an EagleWatch-monitored nest, she stored a watch on the sky.
She discovered two juvenile Bald Eagles flying collectively over agricultural land surrounded by tall timber, considered one of which had leg bands. To match the telemetry knowledge to the eagle earlier than their eyes, the Moreos would wish to both learn the distinctive code on the bands or see the telemetry backpack. With out a skilled digital camera, they zoomed in and hoped for one of the best.
Certain sufficient, the photographs they took confirmed 2025-0085! When zoomed in, a black box-shaped GPS tracker is unmistakable on the chicken’s again. Over the subsequent couple of weeks, the Moreos made a number of extra visits to the realm in hopes of extra sightings of 2025-0085. Every time, they noticed him with at the very least one different juvenile.
Notice: By no means try to get near Bald Eagles or comply with them. They’re protected by state and federal legal guidelines, and it’s unlawful to disturb them or their nests.
The Moreos’ observations, guided by the information from the GPS tracker, present an instance of the lifetime of an orphaned Bald Eagle in its early years. Eaglets usually depart the nest at round 10-12 weeks outdated, however they stick with their mother and father for a number of extra weeks as they study to hunt and follow flying. 2025-0085 launched into his life within the wild with out parental steerage, however the Moreos noticed him with different eagles — a discovered household, simply as we hoped he would discover.
