Rescued eagle has landed in Stafford
BY RUSTY DENNEN / THE FREE LANCE–STAR
A bald eagle that became something of an avian celebrity after its mother was struck by a plane in Norfolk has settled in Stafford County for now.
The Wildlife Center of Virginia—which rescued the female eagle and her two siblings—has been tracking the bird, dubbed NX, for nearly two years.
It’s only the second time the nationally recognized wildlife center in Waynesboro has tracked one of its rehabilitated raptors.
“We did this on a golden eagle a couple of years ago” in conjunction with the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, said Randy Huwa, the wildlife center’s executive vice president.
The center chose to track NX because of her unique history.
She’s “certainly had an unusual life,” said Huwa.
NX was one of three eaglets hatched in a nest at the Norfolk Botanical Gardens in April 2011. The trio had a wrenching start: Their mother was hit by a plane at a nearby airport, and they were sent to the Waynesboro center for care.
One of the three—wearing a band inscribed with the letters NX on one foot—was equipped with a GPS transmitter and released four months later at Berkeley Plantation on the James River below Richmond.
According to tracking data, NX slowly made her way from the Tidewater area to the Northern Neck, where she stayed for about 10 months.
There, she suffered another mishap. She was found along a road in Northumberland County, likely hit by a car.
The bird was captured, sent back to Waynesboro for rehabilitation, and released again in May 2012 at the Rappahannock River Valley National Wildlife Refuge near Warsaw.
After hanging around there for a while, NX turned north, following a meandering path along the Virginia shore of the Potomac River. She appears settled now in Widewater along the northeastern edge of Stafford.
Huwa says NX’s journey is different from other tracked eagles, because most of them stayed in the wild after they were banded and fitted with transmitters.
“The helpful part is insight about what happens to a rehabbed bird,” Huwa said.
“You can’t really make assumptions” that the travel behavior would be the same as the others.
“It’ll be interesting to see how she reacts, where does she go, in the context of [other] birds with transmitters.”
Huwa says there’s no way to predict whether the eagle will stay in Stafford or move on. The transmitter sends tracking data every 15 minutes via cellphone networks.
Huwa says the center is already gleaning valuable information from the tracking data.
“One of the things that’s impressed me is that both times she was released, she hung around the release site for a few weeks. That reinforces, for some of us, to take special care when we put a bird back in the wild. We need to have a good spot.”
The center typically chooses protected areas along rivers for its releases, such as Caledon State Park and Land’s End Wildlife Management Area in King George County and the Rappahannock River Valley refuge.
The lower Rappahannock and Potomac rivers have become eagle hot spots along the East Coast for nesting and feeding on spring runs of migratory fish.
“There’s lots of other eagles around, and they can learn from them,” Huwa said.
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