TERF01 (tracked 2/23/18 - 9/19/18) - Hancock Wildlife Foundation

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 was soon noticed she had an existing leg band! Turns out, she was a rehabilitated bird that was submitted to Orphaned Wildlife Rescue Center in Delta, BC with an injured wing. The bird was originally found on Pasley Island, BC, rehabilitated and released on the same island again in July 2017. Given it had proven its capabilities of surviving post-release for several months, we deployed a transmitter on it to help determine its long-term survival and help address some of the knowledge gaps that exist around the survival rates of rehabilitated raptors. We are hopeful she can help us answer this question and show some of the great work being undertaken at OWL. She has a yellow leg band A over 6 on her left leg, and you can read more about her (and see a couple more pictures) on our Hancock Wildlife Forum thread.

Update – we followed TERF01 for about seven months as she explored the area around greater Vancouver, the Sunshine Coast, and rivers around Bella Coola where she stayed for 3 months; I suspect her transmitter failed because she was in a good place for eagles and moving around actively until her final update on September 19, 2018. There’s a summary of her travels further down on this page, and the interactive map lets you zoom in and look at the places she visited.

Summary of Travels (last updated February 2023)

Received tracker February 22 2018 at the Vancouver Landfill in Delta, BC
Spent a few weeks near a chicken farm in Delta, BC, then began heading north on March 12 and crossed over to the lower end of the Sunshine Coast near Langdale on March 16
She spent a couple of days there, then back south to Surrey and Pitt Meadows for a few days, then over to Delta on the 22nd, then on to what looks like farmland in Richmond through the end of March
Then over to Bowen Island between West Vancouver and the Sunshine Coast, then back to the same part of Richmond, then back to Bowen Island, and then back to Richmond until April 27; knowing that she’s an adult who has been around a while, I’m sure these are good sources of food – and may prefer to not know what kind of food, exactly.
She headed up to Cypress Provincial Park, then on to Anvil Island and Gambler Island, then across to Sechelt on May 4th and back to Bowen Island the next day, and stayed there until May 10.
She was near Half Moon Bay on the 11th and stayed in that area until the 21st.
She headed north after that, arriving in Bella Coola on the 24th of May. I guess whatever she was looking for wasn’t there yet, because she headed south again on the 26th, returning to Half Moon Bay on the 30th.
On June 2nd, she was a bit inland from Sechelt, near the landfill, and stayed there a couple of days before heading to Bowen Island – and back to the Sechelt landfill the next day, where stayed until June 10th.
Then over to Gambler Island, across to south of the Cypress Provincial Park, across to UBC at the northwest corner of Vancouver, back to Bowen Island, and back at the Sechelt landfill on June 16.
She headed north again on the 19th, reaching Bella Coola on June 23rd.
She stayed in Bella Coola until her tracker stopped transmitting, spending a lot of time along a couple of rivers there; her last update was 2 pm on September 19, 2018. We have no way of knowing why she stopped uploading data, but she was active and flying around the area for the previous 3 months, so I think it’s more likely that something happened to the tracker than that something happened to her. Wherever she is, I hope she has fair winds and lots of fish.