http://www.grandforksherald.com/outd...now-rest-story


There's a lot we'll never know about the old eagle that was found with a broken wing early last May on Oak Island of Lake of the Woods and later euthanized because its injuries were too extensive.


How did the eagle break its wing? X-rays taken at The Raptor Center in St. Paul found no indication the eagle had been shot or any other signs of foul play, and the bird tested negative for lead poisoning.

Those circumstances will remain a mystery. So will the question of where the eagle spent its time. As I reported in "An Old Eagle's Final Flight," a column published May 11, the eagle had a leg band showing it had been banded in 1982 somewhere in Ontario.

Where in Ontario wasn't known. And Beth Siverhus, the Warroad, Minn., wildlife rehabilitator who transported the eagle from the Northwest Angle to Warroad and arranged for its flight on a Marvin Windows plane to the Twin Cities, hadn't gotten any further information about the band.

New twist

That appeared to be the end of the story until Monday morning, when I received a call from Ann Zavoral of Fargo. Zavoral and her family have a cabin on Flag Island adjacent to Oak Island, and when she received a copy of the column about the eagle, she took the initiative to contact Jim Grier.

A professor emeritus of biological sciences at North Dakota State University, Grier spent some 40 years banding eagles, mainly in northwestern Ontario, a region that includes the Ontario side of Lake of the Woods. His work has been well-publicized, both in newspapers and on TV.

"I have always wanted to talk with Jim Grier," Zavoral said. "Was he the man" who banded the bird?

Sure enough, he was.

In a phone interview, Grier, who retired in 2006, said he received a report on the eagle's band return in August from the federal Bird Banding Laboratory in Maryland. Information on all birds banded in North America, whether in the U.S. or Canada, is handled through the Maryland laboratory, Grier said.

It's standard procedure for the person who bands a bird to receive reports on band returns, he said.

"They put it in the computer, and if that band ever gets recovered, then they go back and get the original banding information," Grier said. "They combine that with what they call the 'encounter,' and then they send that to the bander."

When and where

According to the report, Grier banded the eagle chick June 19, 1982. Based on latitude and longitude coordinates he provided in his banding report, the nest was on McPherson Island, about 12 miles east of Oak Island.

Grier estimates he has banded about 1,400 eagles and says he gets occasional reports on band returns, which he then keeps on file. The Raptor Center could have requested permission from Grier to supply the band information if they'd known he'd banded the bird, but that wouldn't be common.

"Usually, The Raptor Center people are so busy they don't have time," he said.

Grier, who began studying eagles in 1959, said his original work area was near Red Lake, Ont., but the study area by the late 1960s had expanded to about 90,000 square miles.

Research showed the Ontario side of Lake of the Woods had some of the highest densities of eagle nests, Grier said, so that became a focus area.

"It was just a whole lot easier and cheaper logistically to focus on Lake of the Woods," Grier said. He became well familiar with the Ontario side of the lake and its maze of islands while traveling among nest sites by boat.

"We'd put in a few thousand, maybe a couple thousand miles during the summer just by boat," he said.

Grier, whose work involved climbing tall trees and banding young eagles in their nests, said he doesn't remember specifics about the eaglet banded on McPherson Island, but he said the bird was probably about 6 weeks old.

For years, Grier says, he was among only four researchers doing large-scale banding in North America; the others worked in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, Wisconsin and Michigan.

Better tools

These days, he says, technology such as GPS transmitters provides researchers with better information than bands alone can supply.

"Several eagles have been tracked for a number of years," Grier said. "They can follow the bird and know right where it's at at any one time, so more of the effort and funding and research has kind of gone in that direction."

Chances are, the eagle euthanized last spring could have lived longer -- perhaps even several more years -- if not for the misadventure that broke its wing. It's not uncommon, Grier said, for eagles in the wild to live more than 30 years.

"We've gotten others in that same age range," he said. "The ones of us that banded several thousand birds stay in touch and let each other know when there's an eagle significantly older. We've had several birds now in that 32-year range.

"In the wild, a lot of them don't make it through their first few years, but those who make it to adult, a lot make it into that 30-year range, and then it drops off from there."

Siverhus, the Warroad wildlife rehabilitator, said she knew nothing about the old eagle's band information until contacted this week.

Next summer, she said she hopes to visit McPherson Island and perhaps find the nest where the eagle was fledged.

"If that eagle could only have told his life's story," she said.

Indeed.