We are beyond sorry to announce that bald eagle D36 has died. Bald eagles die and this isn’t the first time we’ve had to announce it. But this feels especially tragic. For almost the first time since we started tracking eaglets from Decorah back in 2011, we won’t be following one. We started tracking them to answer one of the most common questions that followers asked: ‘Where do the Decorah Eagles go?’. They taught us a whole lot about their lives and deaths in the twelve years that we tracked nine of them.
D36 was eating road kill when he was hit by a car and died. Take it easy and watch for animals and roadkill. We don’t know the exact circumstances of D36’s death, but slowing down helps keep everyone safe and might have saved D36’s life.
D36 hatched on April 8, 2020, fledged on June 21, and was fitted with a transmitter in July. During the lockdown, millions of people watched him and took solace in the little eagle family, high in a tree and safe from the human pandemic. He had far more aunties and uncles than he would ever know and we’ll miss tracking him. He is survived by parents Mom and DM2 and preceded in death by sister D35, who died of lead poisoning in January of 2021.
I’ll be uploading his final data tomorrow. If you’d like to explore the travels of any of the eagles we’ve tracked, go to https://www.raptorresource.org/learning-tools/eagle-map/. Here’s a link to a video from that year: https://youtu.be/nPmFJVIHtO4.
Pictured: Ryan Schmitz, Brett Mandernack, D36, Carole Mandernack, Ann and David Lynch.
The Raptor Resource Project