Toao
01-27-2011, 03:50 PM
Ever seen a wild one?
there was a cool thing in the paper today, I guess one has showed up at our zoo
http://images.onset.freedom.com/ocregister/gallery/lfp0f0-lfp0a116.baldeagle.012811.bbc.jpg
A wild bald eagle is whiling away its mornings and evenings at the Orange County Zoo, appearing every day since Sunday and sometimes trading squawks with the zoo’s captive bald eagle.
It could be the captive eagle that is drawing the wild bird, or perhaps the abundant fish in rain-fed Santiago Creek nearby, said zoo manager Donald Zeigler.
Whatever the attraction, the bird is drawing plenty of attention at the zoo, in Irvine Regional Park.
The captive bald eagle is a female, Zeigler said, although the sex of the wild visitor is unknown.
The two stepped up their acquaintance Monday.
“They were vocalizing back and forth in the morning,” Zeigler said.
Bald eagles have turned up on occasion in Irvine Park, he said.
“This is the first time we’ve seen them land this close to the eagle exhibit,” Zeigler said.
The higher water levels in the creek are also drawing other predatory birds.
“We’re starting to see more ospreys and eagles flying around this area,” he said. “I think the eagle has come for, maybe, the fish in the stream.”
Although eagles with shoulder tags sometimes fly over from Catalina, where a bald eagle breeding program is underway, this eagle appears to have no tags, Zeigler said.
While it is possible that one of at least seven breeding pairs of bald eagles on Catalina Island produced a chick that was never tagged, and that later flew to the mainland, it’s unlikely, said Steffani Jijon, a biologist with the island’s Eagle Restoration Project.
“The terrain is really rugged out here,” she said. “We monitor the island very closely, but there are parts of the island you cannot see from land.”
Those areas are checked by helicopter, she said.
“It could have come from here, but I don’t think so,” she said.
Scientists say bald eagle populations on the Southern California coast were shattered by the dumping of DDT off the Palos Verdes Peninsula from the 1940s to the 1970s.
The eagles ate DDT-tainted fish, concentrating the pesticide in their bodies, and the shells of the eggs they laid became too thin to allow embryos to survive and hatch on their own.
Biologists collected and incubated the eggs from 1989 to 2008, returning hatchlings to their nests.
In recent years, however, the eggs of eagles on the Channel Islands have begun hatching on their own again.
Fifteen chicks hatched on the islands last year, nine of them on Catalina.
The eagle visiting the zoo might have flown into the area from the northern United States, where the birds are more common, Jijon said.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASYmBVjkYqs
I say open the cage.
there was a cool thing in the paper today, I guess one has showed up at our zoo
http://images.onset.freedom.com/ocregister/gallery/lfp0f0-lfp0a116.baldeagle.012811.bbc.jpg
A wild bald eagle is whiling away its mornings and evenings at the Orange County Zoo, appearing every day since Sunday and sometimes trading squawks with the zoo’s captive bald eagle.
It could be the captive eagle that is drawing the wild bird, or perhaps the abundant fish in rain-fed Santiago Creek nearby, said zoo manager Donald Zeigler.
Whatever the attraction, the bird is drawing plenty of attention at the zoo, in Irvine Regional Park.
The captive bald eagle is a female, Zeigler said, although the sex of the wild visitor is unknown.
The two stepped up their acquaintance Monday.
“They were vocalizing back and forth in the morning,” Zeigler said.
Bald eagles have turned up on occasion in Irvine Park, he said.
“This is the first time we’ve seen them land this close to the eagle exhibit,” Zeigler said.
The higher water levels in the creek are also drawing other predatory birds.
“We’re starting to see more ospreys and eagles flying around this area,” he said. “I think the eagle has come for, maybe, the fish in the stream.”
Although eagles with shoulder tags sometimes fly over from Catalina, where a bald eagle breeding program is underway, this eagle appears to have no tags, Zeigler said.
While it is possible that one of at least seven breeding pairs of bald eagles on Catalina Island produced a chick that was never tagged, and that later flew to the mainland, it’s unlikely, said Steffani Jijon, a biologist with the island’s Eagle Restoration Project.
“The terrain is really rugged out here,” she said. “We monitor the island very closely, but there are parts of the island you cannot see from land.”
Those areas are checked by helicopter, she said.
“It could have come from here, but I don’t think so,” she said.
Scientists say bald eagle populations on the Southern California coast were shattered by the dumping of DDT off the Palos Verdes Peninsula from the 1940s to the 1970s.
The eagles ate DDT-tainted fish, concentrating the pesticide in their bodies, and the shells of the eggs they laid became too thin to allow embryos to survive and hatch on their own.
Biologists collected and incubated the eggs from 1989 to 2008, returning hatchlings to their nests.
In recent years, however, the eggs of eagles on the Channel Islands have begun hatching on their own again.
Fifteen chicks hatched on the islands last year, nine of them on Catalina.
The eagle visiting the zoo might have flown into the area from the northern United States, where the birds are more common, Jijon said.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASYmBVjkYqs
I say open the cage.