BACA01 (tracked 2/9/18-3/28/19)

[JudyB]

Good early morning Sue and all! I was just checking on a couple of non-HWF eagles on my phone app and I saw that BACA01 has just checked in! Keeping fingers crossed that some of the others are also on the move and will be near cell towers soon so we can see where they have been.

[SueB]

Good early morning Sue and all! I was just checking on a couple of non-HWF eagles on my phone app and I saw that BACA01 has just checked in! Keeping fingers crossed that some of the others are also on the move and will be near cell towers soon so we can see where they have been.

Thank you Judy! I'm just getting back here and so happy that BACA01 has been able to check in. It's hard not knowing where he's at and I was hoping to see him come south a little more.

[SueB]

9/14/18 - the last we had heard from BACA01, he was just off the coast of Carroll Island. Now we can see that he was still around there for that same day but then took a long trip south....well at least it looks long to me. He was at the location marked by the arrow on 9/14 at 5 pm, and flew south and checked in 3 hours later on Kuiu Island. Looks like a beautiful mountainous area with plenty of water around for fishing.

[SueB]

Ohhh, I just googled the distance from Carroll Island to Kuiu Island and it's 34.5 miles as the bird flies, I guess. So BACA01 was going a little over 10 miles an hour, since it took him 3 hours to make that trip.

[SueB]

BACA01 stayed in the Kuiu Island area for the next month, zigzagging around, until 10/18/18 when he started going a little further south, but appeared to still be on Kuiu Island

BACA01 made a quick stop at 5 pm the next day near Keku Strait.....probably to catch some dinner.

[SueB]

10/19/18 - Kupreanof Island is the place BACA01 stopped near the Keku Strait

But BACA01 decided to spend that night on what appears to be a favorite place for him.....Zarembo Island. He had stopped here for quite a bit of time on his way north.

[SueB]

10/21/18 - BACA01 is still on Zarembo Island as of his last check in. Who wouldn't want to be here...it looks so beautiful!

[JudyB]

I think David said somewhere that the trackers on these eagles couldn't communicate with cell towers in Washington state, because the frequency was a bit different than in BC - so now I'm wondering if BACA01 and other eagles visiting Alaska are only checking in when they get close enough to BC to be picked up by a tower there. It seems that all of the US would use the same frequency - though a bit strange that Canada's would be different. Amazing the things we learn by watching eagles!

PS - David has a few more tracking devices to deploy, and those have been adjusted so they will work in Washington as well as BC - so should also work in Alaska. I don't know when he's planning to use them.

[JudyB]

BACA01 has checked in! I check all our eagles on the Animal Tracker app on my phone at least every few days, and I don't think he's checked in since our posts here back in October. He did upload saved data points once he was near a cell tower, and it looks as if he stayed in the same general area where he was last heard from until he began heading south around January 4th.

Here's where he was yesterday -

And here are two views of where he's been since he was tagged on February 9, 2018; the top one is a screen shot of the app on my cell phone, and the second one is from his map on our website - https://hancockwildlife.org/our-project ... ge/baca01/

[JudyB]

I wanted to share what I saw when I opened the app this morning:

The raptor in the blue circle on the right is TERF04 - who has a thread here which I'm going to update next - he also started moving around the first of the year.

The circle with the number 3 in it indicates that there are three tagged birds in that general location - and when I zoomed in to check, they were HWF's newly tagged eagles BACA03, TERF02 and TERF03, who are staying in the Surrey/Delta area for now - but who knows where they'll head as spring approaches!

And then there was a raptor in blue I did not expect on the left - and that turned out to be BACA01!

The raptor in a light gray circle above him is TERF01, who last checked in on September 19 - and I'm hoping she'll show up somewhere with cell towers soon!

[JudyB]

BACA01 is on the move! He stayed around Church House until January 29th, then spent a couple of days in the Bold Point area - and then he was off! The most recent upload was shortly after midnight on February 4th, and he was near Sechelt then - and he might still be there, but he made good time getting there from Bold Point, so he may be headed further south! Here are maps for the last two weeks with closeups on the Church House/Bold Point area and the Sechelt area.

BACA01 was tagged on February 9, 2018, so we've been following him for almost a year!

[marg]

Hi Judy, thanks for the information. I imagine BAC01 wouldn't be in Sechelt now.

[JudyB]

Hi Judy, thanks for the information. I imagine BACA01 wouldn't be in Sechelt now.

You're right, Marg - he only stayed there about a day. His last data upload was February 9 - which means we've been following him for a year! Happy Tag Day, BACA01!

Here is the previous two weeks of activity:

And this is a closer look at his journey from Sechelt to the area around Mission, where he was when he posted.

And I found this interesting - it's a closeup taken from the map of his travels for the past year. The blue dot on the left is where he was tagged at the landfill, and after that he headed south into Washington State for a while. When he headed north, he flew around Vancouver, then headed towards Sechelt - and I think he may have ended up in Alaska. His path back was similar to the one he followed heading north - until now! I don't know where he'll be the next time he checks in, but as of now, instead of heading south across Washington, he headed east towards Mission!

[JudyB]

February 9, 2019

We've been following BACA01, an adult male bald eagle tagged at the Vancouver Landfill in Delta, BC, on February 9, 2018, for one year. Here's where he's been:

[JudyB]

February 17, 2019

I took this screen shot on February 13 but didn't have a chance to post it until now - when I saw it, I did wonder if BACA01 was going to head south like he did last year.

And today we found out - that's just what he's doing!

And the good news is that so far his tracker has been working in the US, which it didn't last year. I heard that the new trackers that David and Myles installed this year were set to work in both Canada and the US, but maybe they were able to transmit an update to the first round of trackers so they can do that, too. Or we may lose track of BACA01 for a while once he gets further from the border - but I'm hoping if he can post updates from where he is today, we'll be able to follow the rest of his journey.