Pennsylvania Game News -November 2008 - 54

Then, on Valentine’s Day, we received an e-mail from Lanzone. “Got a call today from someone helping with a PGC study about an eagle that looked like the one in Game News. Turns out it was the golden eagle you released. It looks very healthy from the pictures and has been visiting the deer [dump] for just over two weeks (they had thought it was a bald eagle until the other day). It’s visiting their study area on private land just north of Greensburg in Westmoreland County, about 25 miles from my office.” They hoped to re-trap her and put on a new transmitter, but she was having none of that. Once trapped, twice shy, but what a relief it was to learn that she was fine and that she hadn’t even left Pennsylvania. And she wasn’t the only golden eagle to winter in our state. At other deer dumps in other parts of the state, stationary cameras captured photos of golden eagles feeding on deer carcasses. There is much more to learn about eastern golden eagles. Katzner estimates that from 1,000 to 1,500 pass through Pennsylvania during migration, which is 90 to 95 percent of the population. So far, it seems as if in the autumn most pre-adults migrate through eastern Pennsylvania along Hawk Mountain (the easternmost ridge in the Ridge-and-Valley Province), and adults through western Pennsylvania, primarily along the Allegheny Front and our own Bald Eagle Ridge, the westernmost ridge in the Ridge-and-Valley Province. Southern West Virginia appears to provide key wintering habitat. In spring, adults migrate mostly from the Allegheny Front to about 60 miles east, although Tussey Mountain, the next ridge to the east of Bald Eagle, seems to be the major ridge. There is also evidence that some pre-adults summer in Virginia. Using GPS satellite telemetry, which is solar powered and should last one to three years, data points at regular intervals are transmitted to a server by satellite. And those points should give researchers all the information they need about the eastern golden eagles’ flight speed, elevation and timing during migration. As Miller continues her “Wind Power and Eagle Migration” Ph.D. work, we hope she traps and radio tags many more golden eagles on our mountaintop and on the Allegheny Front, so we can learn more about the life history of this distinct, poorlyknown, small population of eastern golden eagles. Books in Brief (Not available from the Game Commission.) Escape to the Mountain: A Family’s Adventures in the Wilderness, by Marcia Bonta, Axios Press, P.O. Box 118, Mt. Jackson, VA 22842, 361 pp., $12. All readers of this column, and especially those who have been long-time readers of her Game News column over the years, will be glad to know that this, Marcia’s first book, originally published in 1980, is once again available. In Escape to the Mountain, Marcia describes how she, her husband Bruce and their three sons came to live on their unusual farm. During their first year they survived a blizzard that snowed them in for nearly a week, a flood, which cut them off from the outside world, and a drought that destroyed their first garden. Particularly interesting in this new edition is the epilogue Marcia wrote in which she so eloquently summarizes their life and times living on the mountain for more than 35 years. Every month Game News readers are treated to little snippets of Marcia’s experiences on her mountaintop home. Here, those who have been reading Marcia’s column regularly will certainly appreciate the extensive and encompassing view a book of this length allows, making her columns even more meaningful. 54 GAME NEWS

Pennsylvania Game News -November 2008

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Pennsylvania Game News -November 2008