Checking in with the eaglets!

Where are the eaglets? Up in Canada, D-27 appears to have gotten itchy feet – or maybe itchy wings! She flew over 90 miles south on August 5, but reversed course the next day. By late August 8, she was just 36 miles SSE of Petownikip Lake, this year’s summer island-hopping home.

Click on the map to enlarge each image

I got curious about D27’s previous summers, so I checked them out on our interactive maps. In 2018 and 2019, she left northwest Ontario on August 8. Wildfires were raging across northern Canada both years and we thought that she might have left early to avoid the smoke. According to Ontario’s fire map, there are no large fires burning in her region or immediately west of her this year. Is that why she came back? Unfortunately, she didn’t include a reason for either her departure or her return!

Meanwhile, D36 and D35 are starting to move around a little more. Although they spend a lot of time together near the nest, D35 is doing more wandering to the southwest, while D36 is exploring to the northeast. Over all, the eaglets have tended to wander to the northeast, northwest, south, and south-south-west, in many cases following the tracks of river valleys. We’ll see where these two end up going!

We wish all of our eagles fair skies and favorable winds! As always, a thousand thanks to Brett Mandernack and the staff of Eagle Valley. If you would like to explore the travels of any of the eagles we’ve tracked, please visit https://www.raptorresource.org/learning-tools/eagle-map/.