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BETA - Bald Eagle Tracking Alliance - All Eagles

Note – work in progress ~JudyB

This page will have links to the maps of all the eagles we’ve tracked,
beginning in February 2018.

Links including the dates tracked have been updated through 2022 or are in progress; some of the earlier eagles who are no longer checking in haven’t been added yet, but will be soon.

Click here to see a map of the eagles we’re currently tracking!

As of January 2023, Hancock Wildlife Foundation has placed trackers on 30 bald eagles, 19 of which have been active in the last 6 months.  The link at the top of the page takes you to a page with an interactive map showing the travels of those 19 eagles.

Rather than make a cluttered map with 30 lines (and more being added each year), we are setting up this page that lets you see a small map for each eagle, and click on that map to see the larger version.  The small maps are current as of mid-January 2023; clicking on a small picture will take you to a page with the current interactive map for that eagle, as well as their history.  The interactive map lets you click on a line and see approximately when the eagle was there.  You can also learn more about the eagles and the places they visit on our forum – https://forum.hancockwildlife.org/viewforum.php?f=95.

Trapping some of our local breeders and some of the thousands of migrants will be a start to our better understanding of the world’s largest gathering of bald eagles. Please support the BETA Project: follow an eagle on its annual journey. If you can contribute financially to the Project please do so. The HWF team has devoted a large portion of our consulting dollars to buying Trackers and our first grant application to Molson Breweries also resulted in a fine support grant. At about $5000.00 cost per Tracker we need your support.

Overview of the travels of the eagles we’ve tagged since beginning the project in February 2018:

Click here to meet (and adopt) the eagles we’re currently tracking.

Photo of HWF tracked bald eagle BACA01

BACA01 (tracked 2/9/18 – 3/28/19)

BACA01 is an adult male captured on 09 February 2018 at Vancouver Landfill in Delta, about 20km east of Vancouver ...
Photo of HWF tracked bald eagle BACA02

BACA02 (tracked 2/11/18 – 1/5/21)

BACA02 is an adult male captured on February 11, 2018, at the Vancouver Landfill in Delta, BC, about 20kms east ...
Photo of HWF tracked bald eagle BACA03

BACA03/Croydon Sr (tracked 12/4/18 – 6/24/23)

BACA03 was originally banded in 2009; he fell from his nest in June of that year and was hand reared ...
Photo of HWF tracked bald eagle BETA02

BETA02 (tracked 3/19/19 – 1/15/20)

HWF tracked bald eagle BETA02 was found injured and nearly dead by our one of our directors in January 2019 ...
Photo of HWF tracked bald eagle BETA03

BETA03 (tracked since 11/26/20)

HWF tracked bald eagle BETA03 was tagged and banded on November 26, 2020, at the Vancouver Landfill in Delta, BC ...
Photo of HWF tracked bald eagle BETA04/Loki

BETA04/Loki (tracked since 7/17/20)

HWF tracked bald eagle BETA04/Loki is a very special eagle to many of us because we watched her grow up ...
Photo of HWF tracked bald eagle TERF01

TERF01 (tracked 2/23/18 – 9/19/18)

HWF tracked bald eagle TERF01 is an interesting bird! Captured on 23 February 2018, and determined to be female, it ...
Photo of HWF tracked bald eagle TERF02 with David Hancock

TERF02 (tracked 12/12/18 – 3/26/22)

HWF tracked bald eagle TERF02 was tagged and banded on December 12, 2018, at the Vancouver Landfill in Delta, BC ...
Photo of HWF tracked bald eagle TERF03

TERF03 (tracked 1/4/19 – 7/5/20)

HWF tracked bald eagle TERF03 was tagged and banded on January 4, 2019, at the OWL (Orphaned Wildlife) Rehabilitation Society ...
Photo of HWF tracked eagle TERF04

TERF04 (tracked 2/18/18 – 6/26/19)

HWF tracked bald eagle TERF04 is an adult male captured on 18 February 2018 at Vancouver Landfill in Delta, about ...
Photo of HWF tracked bald eagle TERF05

TERF05 (tracked 2/14/18 – 6/12/18)

HWF tracked bald eagle TERF05 is a sub-adult female captured on 14 February 2018 at Vancouver Landfill in Delta, about ...
Photo of HWF tracked bald eagle TERF06

TERF06 (tracked since 11/29/20)

HWF tracked bald eagle TERF06 was tagged and banded on November 29, 2020, at the Vancouver Landfill in Delta, BC ...
Photo of HWF tracked bald eagle TERF07 (Arctic Gal)

TERF07/Arctic Gal (tracked since 12/12/20)

HWF tracked bald eagle TERF07 was tagged and banded on December 12, 2020, at the Vancouver Landfill in Delta, BC ...
photo of HWF tracked bald eagle TERF08

TERF08 (tracked since 12/6/20)

HWF tracked bald eagle TERF08 was tagged and banded on December 6, 2020, at the Vancouver Landfill in Delta, BC.  ...
Photo of HWF tracked bald eagle TERF09

TERF09 (tracked 1/15/21-6/30/21)

TERF09 is a mature male eagle that was tracked by HWF.  He arrived at OWL - the Orphaned Wildlife Rehabilitation ...
Placeholder photo for HWF tracked bald eagle TERF10

TERF10/Parksville (tracked since 6/7/21)

TERF10 is a juvenile bald eagle who hatched in 2021 in a nest in Parksville on Vancouver Island and has ...
Mike Seear with HWF tracked bald eagle TERF11

TERF11/Vanier Park (tracked since 7/16/21)

HWF tracked bald eagle TERF11 is a nestling who fell from his nest in Vanier Park in Vancouver, BC; he ...
Photo of 2 of the 3 Hastings eaglets just after release, courtesy of forum member Annemie, early July 2021

TERF12/Hastings (tracked since 7/28/21)

TERF12 fledged from his nest on Hastings Street in Vancouver, BC, (near the Pacific Northwest Exhibition) and subsequently crashed into ...
Fledgling eagle TERF13

TERF13/Pixel (tracked since 8/4/21)

TERF13 and TERF14 were both rescued as eaglets from thick vegetation after their nest near the Boundary Bay Airport fell ...
fledging eagle TERF14

TERF14/Jpeg (tracked 8/4/21 – 1/3/22)

TERF13 and TERF14 were both rescued as eaglets from thick vegetation after their nest near the Boundary Bay Airport fell ...
Boundary Bay siblings Pixel and Jpeg, courtesy of Alain-Pierre Hovasse

TERF13+TERF14

TERF13 ("Pixel") and TERF14 ("Jpeg") were both rescued as eaglets from thick vegetation after their nest near the Boundary Bay ...
Photo of TERF15 by Myles Lamont

TERF15/Croydon Jr (tracked 8/18/21 – 8/2/22)

TERF15 was tagged and banded on August 18, 2021, at the OWL (Orphaned Wildlife) Rehabilitation Society facility in Delta, BC ...
photo coming soon

TERF15b (tracked since 2/19/24)

HWF tracked bald eagle TERF15b is a juvenile bald eagle who was banded and received a tracker at the landfill ...
Photo of TERF16 at OWL by Myles Lamont, November 5 2021

TERF16/TEUS03

TERF16 was originally tagged as TEUS03 on January 8, 2019, after spending about 6 weeks at the OWL (Orphaned Wildlife) ...
Photo of HWF tracked bald eagle TERF17

TERF17 (tracked 11/4/21-5/10/23)

HWF tracked bald eagle TERF17 is a young female adult who received a tracker on November 5, 2021, at the ...
Placeholder photo for HWF tracked bald eagle TERF17a

TERF17x (tracked 6/17/23 – 8/3/23)

While not an official part of our tracking study because he or she sadly didn't survive to leave the nest ...
photo coming soon

TERF17a (tracked since 2/19/24)

HWF tracked bald eagle TERF17a is a juvenile bald eagle who was banded and received a tracker at the landfill ...
Photo of TERF22 at OWL by Myles Lamont March 10 2022

TERF19

TERF19 is a bald eagle who was tagged in March 2022. We are hoping to get more information about him ...
Photo of bald eagle TERF20

TERF20

TERF20 is a bald eagle who was tagged in early March 2022. We are hoping to get more information about ...
TERF21

TERF21

TERF21 is a bald eagle who was tagged earlier in 2022. We are hoping to get more information about him ...
TERF22

TERF22

TERF22 is an adult bald eagle who was tagged in May 2022. We are hoping to get more information about ...
Photo of TERF23 by Diana Seear

TERF24 (tracked since 1/12/2023)

TERF24 was banded and equipped with a tracker on June 7, 2022, while she was still a nestling in the ...
Photo of TERF26/Annie just after release, courtesy of ECeaglevideo, August 1. 2022

TERF26/Annie (tracked since 7/26/22)

TERF26 is a female bald eagle who has been nesting west of Lighthouse Park in West Vancouver, BC, since the ...
TERF27 (tracked 12/2/22 - 7/16/23)

TERF27 (tracked 12/2/22 – 7/16/23)

TERF27 is an adult male bald eagle who was tagged and banded before being released on December 2, 2022, by ...
Photo of TERF28 by Myles Lamont

TERF28 (tracked since 12/31/2022)

TERF28 is an adult female bald eagle who was tagged before being released on December 31, 2022, by the Orphaned ...
Photo of HWF tracked bald eagle TERF02

TEUS03

TEUS03 - Text coming soon! For further, in depth information about this exciting project, click here ...

 

For further, in depth information about this exciting project, click here

IOC BETA Poster

Produced for the recent International Ornithological Conference held in Vancouver, BC recently, the image below captures some of the recent findings of the BETA project:

For an even larger version of this image, click here

Update on World’s Largest Birder Gathering – Aug 26 PM

By David Hancock

Aug 21 to 26 the International Ornithological Congress

Equals

Bird Brain Scientists and Devoted Birders — The World’s BEST!

  1. HWF had a booth – (If anyone has photos of the HWF booth, would you please send them to David.)
  2. Our Volunteers explained eagles, talked eagles and gave out brochures on HWF, the Fraser Valley Bald Eagle Festival, the wonders of the Harrison Salmon Stronghold and we also sold books to help fund the event.
  3. We presented Christian Sasse’s new Eagle Film;   Also see Christian’s full set of IOC interviews on YouTube
  4. Dr. Mike Seear and Myles Lamont ‘defended’ our “Poster”, a scientific summary of our Bald Eagle Tracking Alliance Project – following the 5 tracked Bald Eagles presently Roaming Alaska and northern Canada.
  5. We supported Dr. David Bird’s daily cell phone review of the IOC events and undertaking interviews with Dr. Christian Sasse that are now archived on Christian’s Youtube channel

Finally, it was incredible to have so many old friends drop by and say, “remember when we first met”, for example, “at the Ohio Bald Eagle Conference — in 196?” and the date would trail off.  I too had forgotten that first BE conference date.  On and on it went – wonderful old memories …….

So now where?  Locally we have several bald eagle crises – the construction of a bald eagle nest framework and two CAMS tomorrow in south Surrey.  This is a very positive story of how a developer, assessing his property realized there was an active eagle nest in the middle and we have collectively resolved how his subdivision went forward but surrounds the City of Surrey’s first Bald Eagle Preserve.  Quite wonderful. 

The Croydon Eagle Outrage: Then later in the week please stay tuned for the Croydon Eagle Outrage – yes, the eagles are outraged, the people of Surrey are outraged and I am outraged that someone cut down an active bald eagle’s nest, my nest #009, in the very heart of my City. To date some 22 citizen groups have said that this will not go un-avenged. Stay tuned as to what lower-mainland people think about this atrocity. Will the Croydon Eagle Outrage become bigger than little Surrey – Canada’s largest City? Yes, by some standards Surrey is Canada’s largest City!

Again, thank you all for your good thoughts on eagles and the many hugs I got at the IOC from people both across the country who have followed our CAMS, and in several cases, initiated CAMS in their area, and from locals who I had not met before – thank you so much.

Cheers,
David Hancock
Hancock Wildlife Foundation   604 761-1025

 

P.S.  At the August International Ornithological Congress in Vancouver, where we presented a poster at the conference we learned that we did not receive the signals for a slightly different reason.  Indeed, our eagle’s transmitter was not picked up, but not because our bird was hidden in a deep Columbia River Valley.  It was because the technology on our transmitter did not talk to the Telephone Company in Washington State – a slightly different frequency.  That is now corrected on the additional gps tags.

It is now October and our breeding eagles are already starting to return to defend their nest sites.  Before long we will be welcoming the eagles at the Fraser Valley Bald Eagle Festival – Nov. 17-18.  This year is forecast to be another record year for fish – and eagles – so make your plans to attend.  The Fraser River Safari Tours has a new owner, but I will again be out when requested as river guide.  So, call Liron for a reservation:  fraserriversafari@gmail.com

David Hancock

 

Update October 5, 2018    Following our Tagged Eagles

+ the Upcoming Festival

 

At 15 I learned to fly so I could be closer to eagles.  Today in 2018 as I was developing the WEB Summary Report for Tracking our gps tagged & Color Banded eagles, I entered the name of the first cell tracked eagle:  Hope & Expectations.  Wow – it hit me!  I have passed 80, so what is left:  Hope and Expectations?! I was immediately reviewing my misspent youth.

At age 15, as I was logging the flying time to get my pilots license, I realized that all the Canadian Gulf Islands had a pair of nesting eagles every mile to a mile and a half of shoreline – but the American San Juan Islands, sometimes a few 100 meters away, had no breeding eagles – NONE.  But why?  On my 16th birthday my dad gave me his car and I took the ferry to the mainland and turned south to Blaine Washington.  And within minutes I knew why America had few eagles.

On each wintering fishing boat, waiting for its summer return to the rich Alaskan waters to fish, was a white bucket – to contain the feet and legs of bald eagles – each pair worth $2.00 in Alaska.  If the bucket was filled with eagle legs the fisherman could almost earn enough “bounty money” to pay his gas north.  Now I don’t just blame American fisherman for this atrocity – though only Alaska was offering the bounty.  The whole world – yes, the whole world – considered all predators and scavengers as vermin – something that might compete with humans and needed to be destroyed.  If you were an eagle, a hawk, a coyote, a seal or even a killer whale you were bad and needed to be destroyed.  That was the message sold by every scope, ammunition and gun manufacturer – and the clothing manufacturers and other supportive industries got on the bandwagon.  Thank goodness that changed through the 1960’s so today we honor the predators as key indicators of the health of our world – today those same gun orientated manufacturers promote ‘killing’ humans instead.

So, as I was putting together the details and gathering in concerned associates to get our BETA Project up and running for the next year, I realized I was really driven by the same needs today as 65 years ago – to make people more aware of how we are dependent upon an ecologically sustainable world.  Curbing individual greed has been our societal challenge – and remains our challenge today.  Now it was even more crucial.  Most of the world has lost much of the wildness, so many species have been so incredibly over harvested and had their habitat, the life-line to living, paved over or plowed under.  Yet today in and around Vancouver British Columbia we annually have the largest gathering of bald eagles ever known – perhaps eagle gatherings greater than 500 years ago – but more on that possible exaggeration later.  Yet we still don’t understand where our estimated 35,000 eagles come from or where our locally breeding 1000 adults and their young go to after the breeding season.

The BETA Project is our small attempt to bring some answers – in short to try and live up to our responsibility of knowing something more definitive about this world class wildlife spectacle.  I hope that tracking these eagles will further excite those who have followed our pioneering outreach efforts of Live Streaming the nesting lives of eagles and spawning salmon, our efforts to make people more aware of our local ecological treasures through support of local organizations.  For us this has been the Fraser Valley Bald Eagle Festival, the Harrison Salmon Stronghold and supporting preservation of key wildlife areas like our incredible Chehalis Flats Bald Eagle & Salmon Preserve on the Harrison River and trying to keep our Salish Sea free from spilled oil.  Already we can see some of our “Tracked Eagles” are passing key ecological areas across the country – what a wonderful lesson in geography and ecology.

Ok – back to the tears.  Our first ‘Cell Tracked Bald Eagle’ was so symbolic to me.  On most of my many annual talks I have left in a photo I took in 1964, in what is now the Great Bear Rain Forest of the central British Columbia coast.  That photo shows 1 of 17 eagles I found that day – all shot at the mouth of the Bay of Plenty on Princess Royal Island, by rifle – operated by someone still not understanding the integrated ecological role of all living things.  From time to time I am continuously reminded we are never far from this uncaring attitude.  So, in spite of wishing everybody to get involved in naming one of our ‘traveling eagles’ I decided to usurp the first bird name – Hope & Expectations.  I wrote that name down the day we released her – or him.

The next day, actually two days, she lived up to wonderful expectations, sending home signals of her travels.  That she/he went where I would never have anticipated is another story dealt with elsewhere. The trauma really started on the 3rd day – she did not report home. It was like a lost child – and she did not report back the next day, the next week, the next 3 and 4 weeks.  Expectations were definitely diminishing.  Myles and I repeatedly discussed. Did we screw up on the tagging of our first eagle?  Did the equipment already fail?  Had this unexpected journey south meant we had an ‘imperfect bird’ – perhaps even dying?  But why no signal from the cell?  Nothing was making sense.

One month later she called home – wow – all was forgiven!  Our techniques, the technology and terrain had all come together as they should.  Indeed, keep the faith baby!  For those just reading this and not understanding our cell technology all was as expected.  The cell transmitters only send us a signal when the backpack signal is picked up on its daily transmission by a cell tower.  No tower, no call home!  Now that she did call home she sent 4 gps data points from every day for the past months travel positions.  She had spent a month in deep valleys along the Columbia River in Washington and Oregon states out of cell range.  Now we knew her full journey and you can too.  Hope & Expectations.

But today, March 24, 2018, as I was creating the Summary Table to plot all our eagle’s movements, “Hope & Expectation” was the TOTAL background world sound – the kids’ international “March For Our Lives” protests were awakening the world.  It was ‘Hope & Expectation” all over again.  And really for precisely the same reasons.  We humans don’t just have to live more respectively with each other but live ecologically sustainably in the shared world.  So here it is:  the second eagle banded is being called Yolonda, after that little 9-year-old Martin Luther King grandchild who surely must have brought the world to tears.  It did me.  The next 17 eagles will be named after the 17 Stoneman Douglas High School students who so needlessly lost their lives – but hopefully to awaken a too complacent world.  Indeed, we all pass, but it has been incredibly inspiring today, a revitalization of hope and expectations, that with a good improved path eagles and humans might continue to co-exist.

The first 19 eagle names are gone.  I wish – with hope and expectations – that others will come up with meaningful names to encourage our eagles on their way.  We will shortly be launching an eagle naming contest.

Thanks,
David Hancock

P.S.  At the August International Ornithological Congress in Vancouver, where we presented a poster at the conference we learned that we did not receive the signals for a slightly different reason.  Indeed, our eagle’s transmitter was not picked up, but not because our bird was hidden in a deep Columbia River Valley.  It was because the technology on our transmitter did not talk to the Telephone Company in Washington State – a slightly different frequency.  That is now corrected on the additional gps tags.

It is now October and our breeding eagles are already starting to return to defend their nest sites.  Before long we will be welcoming the eagles at the Fraser Valley Bald Eagle Festival – Nov. 17-18.  This year is forecast to be another record year for fish – and eagles – so make your plans to attend.  The Fraser River Safari Tours has a new owner, but I will again be out when requested as river guide.  So, call Liron for a reservation:  fraserriversafari@gmail.com

David Hancock