TERF05 (tracked 2/14/18 – 6/12/18) - Hancock Wildlife Foundation

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 20kms east of Vancouver as the eagle flies. She was banded by Mike Seear and David Hancock with a blue leg band G over 3 on its left leg. This bird was our first one to leave the Fraser Valley on 24 February and head north, following the Fraser River up towards Williams Lake. She is currently our only sub-adult with a transmitter so will be interesting to see what she does!

Please visit our Hancock Wildlife Forum thread for more information about the areas TERF05 visited during her travels.

Update: As you can see from her map, she took a very different route than most of our eagles, who generally stay near the coast. And unfortunately, her transmitter was only moving for about 4 months, although it continued to transmit from a very small area for another year. Someone did go to the area to look for TERF05 or her transmitter – and the fact that they didn’t find either one gives me hope that the transmitter came off and TERF05 is fine, though we’ll never know unless someone gets a picture of an eagle with TERF05’s blue band with silver G over 3. There’s a summary of her travels further down the page.

Summary of Travels (last updated February 12, 2023)

Received tracker February 14 2018 at the Vancouver Landfill in Delta, BC (almost 3 years old when banded)
After being released, she headed northeast to Stave Falls, arriving on February 18, then passed near Harrison Mills on the 18th as she headed for the area above Cheam View on the Fraser River, where she was on the 23rd and 24th; she followed the Fraser north, checking in above North Bend on the 25th, moving away from the river above Lytton on the 26th, then spending almost a week near Campbell Hills Ranch in Clinton, BC, before visiting nearby Loon Lake on March 7
She continued heading north, spending a day or two near Alexandria, then almost a week in a wooded area with some open space where there was obviously something of interest, before heading north again on the 23rd; she apparently felt it was time to travel – she went about 130km/80mi between check-ins on March 23 and 24, arriving a bit west of Prince George
She spent a couple of days there, then headed east to Kakwa Provincial Park and crossed into Alberta on the 28th, then went northeast, then northwest, ending up near Grande Prairie on March 30th.
TERF05 explored the area around Grande Prairie and Beaverlodge for a couple of weeks, from March 30 through April 13, then another long flight (320km/200mi) to Carcajou, arriving at the Peace River on April 14
Another long flight the next day (230km/140mi) brought her to some little lakes that don’t appear to have names
She then went south for several days, arriving in Red Earth Creek on April 19th
Apparently that didn’t suit her; when she checked in the next day, she was about 350km/220mi further north, almost to the border with the Northwest Territories
She rested a day, then crossed into NWT, reaching the area around Great Slave Lake on April 23rd
She moved up and down the Hay River for a few days, then headed west along the shore of the lake on the 29th, going a bit southwest to Tathlina Lake on the 30th, visiting the area south of the lake on May 1st, and returning to the area between Hay River and Vale Island on the 2nd
She headed South again on May 3rd, arriving in the northwest corner of Wood Buffalo National Park that evening, and spending a little over a week exploring what I think is Buffalo River near what may be Buffalo Lake (not named on all maps); Buffalo River appears to run between Great Slave Lake to the north and the lake which may be Buffalo Lake
Starting on the 13th, she headed northeast, then north, then southwest, arriving near the northern end of Buffalo River, about 15km south of Great Slave Lake; she stayed there until June 7
She arrived back along the Hay River on June 10, and we have a number of data points for her on the 11th from both sides of the river, moving back and forth within a kilometer of where her tracker finally stopped moving significantly on June 12, 2018
The tracker continued to upload data from a very small area along the river until October 10, then had minimal contact until April 10, 2019, after which it was again uploading data from the same tiny area until it finally stopped transmitting on July 17, 2019; most of the data points in the final year of transmission were logged as coming from an area about 100 meters or 300 feet in diameter – much smaller than you’d see even from an eagle staying close to a nest – so we believe that either the tracker fell off or something happened to TERF05. Personally, I (JudyB) think the tracker somehow came off – maybe somehow snagged on a tree branch or something in the water; it seems to me that an injured or dead eagle would have been easier for people to see when they went to try to find the tracker – and to be a bit blunt, I think if the eagle died, over the course of the next year, the body would have been moved enough that the tracker would have been buried and no longer transmitting. But unless an eagle with TERF05’s blue band with silver G over 3 shows up somewhere, we’ll never know for sure.