The three eaglets at Norfolk Botanical Garden get a little wardrobe adjustment this week.
At 9 a.m. Wednesday, March 31, each eaglet will be fitted with two identification bands by biologists from the Center for Conservation Biology at the College of William and Mary. The public can watch from a short distance while the process takes place at the Renaissance Court; garden admission is required.
The eaglets, which hatched March 11, 13 and 14, have grown rapidly and are now covered in a soft gray down, according to Reese Lukei with the conservation biology center. He maintains an eagle nest blog at
http://eaglenest.blogs.wm.edu and will help do the banding.
"Both parents have been very attentive to their chicks, who have been fed several times a day," Lukei said. "In this rainy weather, the adults are keeping them covered, dry and warm."
During the banding, each eaglet is briefly removed from the nest and outfitted with two ID bands. One is purple to indicate the Chesapeake Bay region, and the other is aluminum and has a number on it that is entered into a data bank at the U.S. Geological Survey Bird Banding Lab in Maryland so any researcher can get information on that specific eagle.
"Banding provides the opportunity to gain information in future years about their migration, age and where as adults they settle to breed their own young," Lukei said. "This is especially important for eagles that are hatched in urban nests such as the one at Norfolk Botanical Garden."
Later in the season, one of the eaglets will be fitted with a satellite transmitter that will allow biologists to follow its travels. Last season, one of the eaglets from the botanical garden, named Azalea for tracking purposes, was fitted with a transmitter, and her wide-ranging travels are documented for the public at
http://eagletrak.blogs.wm.edu, Lukei said.
