Surrey Reserve 2022-2023 Observation and Discussion

[Sandy_W]

7:15 am logging into both cams. 7:19 am off both cams. Beautiful morning at Surrey.

[Jean]

8:17am...........Good morning all! Nice and sunny today but so much cooler in the early morning now!

IN on both cams just to check on the cams.

Seems very quiet. Saw only 1 bird but think it was a crow or something similar.

Cams seem to be working well.

OFF cams.

[nightowl]

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2023

[Sandy_W]

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2023



Good morning everyone. It is September 25th and will not be long hopefully to see Brit and Rey return to the nest.

5:54 am not sure what happened yesterday as I am not checking on the cams as much. Both cams are viewing a different area other the home view. Logging into both cams to check. 5:58 am off both cams and brought the cams back to the nest area.

[CC398]

Good evening SR friends. As we patiently wait for Rey and Brit to return from migration, here is a throwback to Rey with one of his first offspring

[nightowl]

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2023

[Linuxgw2]

CC398,

Awww tugging at the heart..The pure beauty of our Eagle Mom and Dad's on our nest!

? I started watcing this nest last season with Res and Sur as well as my home nest Delta2, Ma and DM.
When I came back to the surrey nest this year , a new pair, Rey and Brit were now occupants of Surrey nest.
Were Res and Sur forced and driven from the nest by Rey and Brit this past season? I wasnt aware a new pair had taken over until
I saw the new names.
I in my heart hope they were not harmed and were just forced out of their home nest by the new eagle pair. And that Res and Sur are off in a new nest continuing thier legacy in Surrey.

Thank you for posting a beautiful pic of Rey with his first wee one..
Waiting for arrival of our eagle familys to return from migration, strong and healthy..

Linuxgw2

[JudyB]

CC398,

Awww tugging at the heart..The pure beauty of our Eagle Mom and Dad's on our nest!

? I started watcing this nest last season with Res and Sur as well as my home nest Delta2, Ma and DM.
When I came back to the surrey nest this year , a new pair, Rey and Brit were now occupants of Surrey nest.
Were Res and Sur forced and driven from the nest by Rey and Brit this past season? I wasnt aware a new pair had taken over until
I saw the new names.
I in my heart hope they were not harmed and were just forced out of their home nest by the new eagle pair. And that Res and Sur are off in a new nest continuing thier legacy in Surrey.

Thank you for posting a beautiful pic of Rey with his first wee one..
Waiting for arrival of our eagle familys to return from migration, strong and healthy..

Linuxgw2

Good question, Linuxgw, as we get ready for the new season.

The short answer is that we believe that current male Rey challenged former resident male Sur for the territory on November 12, 2021, and won; no injured male fitting Sur's description turned up at OWL, so in the lack of evidence to the contrary, I'm going to believe that Sur realized that Rey was younger and stronger and possibly slightly bigger, and left. I'm aware that it's also possible that Sur was badly injured or killed and never found - but Rey didn't appear to have any injuries when we first saw him at the nest, so I'm going to continue to believe that Sur decided it was time to retire.

Former resident female Res stayed in the territory and did some work on the nest, and it's possible the new young male (who was eventually named Rey) was sort of trying to court her, though he had a habit of trying to grab her food rather than bring her the food treats she'd come to expect from Sur. We did not see any sign that another female was trying to take over the nest, but we also did not see Res again after late afternoon on December 23, 2021. There was some bad weather over the next few days, but nothing that should cause a problem for an adult eagle; there were also no reports of injured or dead eagles in the area around Surrey Reserve.

As I posted in the spring of 2022, "My personal theory (which is pure speculation) is that Sur had recovered enough by the 23rd to leave the area ahead of the storm, and did a distant fly-by before leaving forever - and Res saw him, thought about what a jerk the new male can be - and yelled "Wait for me!" as she flew off to join him (humanizing just a little )."

There are more details and links in the "notable dates 2021" post - viewtopic.php?f=114&t=584#p501051

Longer post on what happened to Sur - viewtopic.php?f=114&t=584#p501176

Longer post on what might have happened to Res - viewtopic.php?f=114&t=584#p501728

We began seeing at least one female visiting the nest starting on December 31st, 2021 - and I'm not actually sure if that was the female who is now Brit or if there were a couple of interested females before Brit and Rey became an established pair, but it was clear fairly early in 2022 that there was a new resident pair, though Brit and Rey didn't do any serious work on the nest until fall of 2022. They both appeared young, with traces of dark feathers that were mostly replaced with white during their first year in the territory.

[nightowl]

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2023

[Jean]

3:32pm..........

Thanks Judy for the summary of important events on this nest. Most helpful. Great to see an eagle stopping by at Harrison Mills!

viewtopic.php?f=11&p=697260#p697260


.IN on both cams.

Checked the rollback.........did not see any eagles.

Did a quick check. Nothing of significance here.

The past week or so has been cooler with rain finally coming to the area. And lots of wind too..................Fall is definitely here and soon we should see some eagles, hopefully Brit and Rey.

OFF cams.

[nightowl]

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2023

[Sandy_W]

3:24 pm logging into both cams for a looksee. Didn't see any activity after a quick check of the rollback. 3:33 pm off both cams. Seems to be a nice sunny afternoon with beautiful clouds in the sky. Didn't see any birds.

[CC398]

Good afternoon SR friends!

I can confirm that the urban adult BE’s are returning to the Fraser Valley and are giving the Vedder River fisherman a run for their money

I am officially on Rey and Brit watch with the streams running on my on my television with the sound up.

I caught Rey’s return last year on October 7th when he landed on the nest after his nearly 2 month absence. He inspected his nest and then perched nearby

I wonder if he’ll keep his beautiful dark mascara eyes?

[gemini]

.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2023

Rey has returned to his nest and the new season now begins!

The 2022-2023 Season has ended and this topic is now locked!

Please go HERE for the 2023-2024 season!

[JudyB]

Thanks for closing this thread and setting up the new thread for the season that is now beginning, gemini!

I'm afraid I'm going to confuse things a bit by adding a postscript with additional details about Tyr's necropsy, starting with a new email from Jack Evans. I'll post links to this and any future updates about Tyr in the current thread, but want to keep all the basic information here.

Comments from Jack Evans, wildlife biologist with the Ministry of Forests in BC

Hi Judy,

Hope all is well. It has been an atypical summer here, drought, fires, smoke and now lately back to a measure of SARS-CoV-2 masking and vaccination boosters. Hope you guys got missed by the hurricane a while back.

We (mostly David and Myles) have been unbelievably busy here in the last six weeks with preparation for return of the northern migrants to their territories and the concurrent and increasing panic that those events bring with them. We are now past the peak for getting permits issued for nests that must be destroyed to accommodate public and operational safety concerns and to accommodate developments, including mandatory mitigation plans that need to be negotiated. Fortunately for us, it looks like many of the territorial pairs may be a bit late getting back to re-stake their territorial boundaries.

Tomorrow is an exceptionally busy day for HWF as it is the augering-in of a pole for a mitigated nest for DE-099 nest (I'm starting to write like David speaks!! -- "a good thing). A long and complex process filled with too may peaks and valleys fraught with bouts of frustrated innovation -- David brought it home though!! I will let him relate the series of sagas that this one took over the mid and late summer -- best heard firsthand.

And to the good news... we have two tentative dates for a necropsy session that will include your Tyr -- 26 Oct or 02 Nov.

The session is planned to be done at Environment and Climate Change Canada (Canadian Wildlife Service) necropsy lab in Delta, a southern suburb of Vancouver. The ECCC (CWS) lab is on the Alaksen National Wildlife Area (not Alaskan), which is the Pacific and Yukon Headquarters for ECCC (CWS). Properly it is Pacific Wildlife Research Centre (PYRC).

Staff from OWL, PYRC, the Animal Health Centre Lab in Abbotsford (AHC) and possibly some others, will be participants. I understand they are planning on doing several specimens as part of that session.

So, we are getting closer, finally. Thank you to you and all your volunteers for your patience and help. Please pass this to them as an update. Without you all the world-class data set for this specimen would not be possible. I recall Ildiko saying that there is very likely no other museum specimen anywhere that will have such a wealth of data, samples, and documentation… and we don't even know the necropsy results yet.

The necropsy lab at PYRC is not as spacious as at BBM (UBC), so the number of participants will be kept to a maximum capacity that is not too crowded to work (a challenge for Laurie Wilson and Ildiko to draw that line on max #s). As I recall the last time we were there we rotated in shifts to do the hands-on work and, "The Three L's" -- Look, Listen, and Learn.

This message will also go to CWS staff that are organizing the event, and others too, so they are aware of your critical part in the history and continuity for the Surrey Reserve nest program.

Tyr was assigned an intake file at OWL that I have not been able to see in my emails. Rob will have it and provide to Jim who is going to visit OWL and pick up the specimen shortly for Laurie and Sandi at PYRC.

Rob will also be asked to provide the full case file notes as preparation and background for the necropsy. I don't think there will be any sensitive data or parts to the file, so we will ask that as much as possible will be shared with you and the Surrey Reserve Nest volunteer group (all of it if possible). Same for the results of the necropsy. We will know more about this part as we get farther into the planning process (I hope I am not speaking out of line with any of this?? If I am, I will be corrected... again!).

Also, our Wildlife Health Lab in Nanaimo (on Vancouver Island), assigned a specimen tracking number WLH Id 23 - 1031 for Tyr. I have copied Maeve and Owen at WHL.

Judy, I recall you mentioning that you were compiling a summary of background for the Surrey Reserve nest and the two eaglets as they developed. How is that going? This data, photos and video will become part of the highly unique BBM museum specimen data for Tyr.

Once the necropsy is completed the specimen will be prepared for accession to the BBM, and 'immortality'.

Specimens, samples, and data from the necropsy and the prepared specimen will be shared internationally over time -- decades -- as project demands and requests come along.

These are the news. Have fun‼

Thanks,

Jack