D27 is a five year old eagle who hatched at N2B in Decorah in 2017. She is the offspring of Mom and Dad. D36 is a two-year old eagle who hatched at N2B in Decorah in 2020. He is the offspring of Mom and DM2.
D27: Summering in Canada
Thanks so much for the airmail, D27 and D36! Far-flung traveler D27 is beating the heat up in Canada this summer. She headed north on May 22 – a lot earlier than she left last year – and spent all of June and the first seven days of July wandering around her usual summering grounds in northwestern Ontario. She’s sent 971 postcards from the region since 2018, so we were surprised when she decided to chart a new course north toward Hudson’s Bay. As of July 19, she was just south of Wapusk National Park, about 873 miles northwest of her natal nest.
Until now, D27 has summered in Canada’s Boreal Shield: a place of seemingly endless spruce, balsam fir, and jack pine forests, granite outcroppings, and blue northern lakes. But her latest flight has carried her over the Hudson’s Bay Ecoregion – a flat, waterlogged landscape that provides an ideal summer home for millions of migratory birds, including many of the ducks, plovers, sandpipers, geese, and swans we see migrating through the Mississippi Flyway. This is the farthest north that any of our Bald Eagles have flown and we’re very excited to see where she might go next!
D36: Iowa Staycation
While D27 is in Canada, D36 is taking a staycation as he drifts from Spillville to Ridgeway and back again. He’s currently about 12 miles northwest of his natal nest near Cardinal Marsh State Wildlife Area, a 1200-acre eagle vacation paradise of hardwood timber, native prairie, marshes, and a winding river filled with fish. We’re eagerly awaiting a report from John, who tracked him and took photos on Sunday morning. As Brett pointed out, this is the first time we’ve seen D36 since he left his natal area back in 2020. While we wait for John’s report, here’s a look at D36 on August 17, 2020 – one of the last times we saw him.
As always, a thousand thousand thanks to Brett Mandernack and the staff of Eagle Valley for sharing their data, maps, and expertise with us, and to Kohler Company for supporting our bald eagle tracking program. To explore the travels of any of the eagles we’ve tracked, visit our interactive maps at https://www.raptorresource.org/learning-tools/eagle-map/.
Additional Links
Photo credit Garth Lenz via The Narwhal: https://thenarwhal.ca/ring-of-fire-ontario-peatlands-carbon-climate/.
The Raptor Resource Project