Pennsylvania Game News - February 2013 - 53

100 trail cam sites in several states but were lacking sites in Pennsylvania. “We simply don’t have enough data on Pennsylvania wintering birds and it is especially important given your proximity to Sandy Ridge,” she wrote. By Sandy Ridge she meant the section of the Allegheny Front across from our mountain and above the town of Tyrone where a couple dozen industrial wind mills had been erected despite Miller’s discovery, while studying for her Ph.D., that golden eagles use that area for foraging during the winter. When Paula agreed to participate, Miller sent her a copy of the protocol for the study which she shared with me. The goal of the project was to estimate the population size of wintering golden eagles in the Appalachians. To accomplish this goal, they wanted many photographs of individual golden eagles. Then they planned to use a specially designed software package to identify individuals. Once they had identiﬁed individual eagles, they could treat the photographs as “captures’ and use them to estimate golden eagle numbers. Trail cameras had to be set to take a picture every minute and visited every two to ﬁve days. They also had to be on a stake or small tree six feet from the carcass and the lens itself 18 to 24 inches above the ground. The study was scheduled for two to four weeks between January 1 and February 15. Bait sites needed to be on remote mountaintop areas with small clearings and large trees nearby so that an eagle could perch in one and watch the bait for a time before actually landing on it. The protocol also suggested that the carcasses be roadkilled deer for which the biologists had permits from the Game Commission. “Do not use hunter-killed deer for bait,” the protocol warned. “Such carcasses almost always contain lead fragments that are toxic to eagles.” Several weeks later Miller came out to look at possible trail cam sites. She ﬁnally
FEBRUARY 2013

decided on a site behind our spruce grove and another at our Far Field. She also hoped, if a golden eagle came to the spruce grove bait area, to set up a blind and try to live trap and telemeter it so the biologists could ﬁnd out where the individual nested. The protocol warned participants to make sure they had enough bait to feed eagles because a small deer could disappear in a day. Knowing how many other creatures would use the bait, Troy and Paula decided to ask their farmer friends in the nearby valleys for cows that had died giving birth. As long as those cows had no antibiotics in their bodies and their heads were removed where the farmers had shot them, they received permission to use them as well as roadkilled deer and, in one case, a dead calf. On the seventh of January, Troy, Paula and our son, Dave, drove a 700-pound dead cow in the back of their truck to the Far Field, staked it down and set up a camera. That same day they took two deer and a dead calf, chained them together, and staked them down 40 feet into the top of First Field behind the spruce grove. And then they waited. Paula faithfully checked her cameras and sent photos to me of a barred and great horned owl, crows, a bobcat, coyotes, a ﬁsher, a red-tailed hawk, and raccoons at the bait both night and day but no golden eagles. As the weeks passed, she grew more and more frustrated. Finally, on the seventh of February, she persuaded Troy to haul another dead cow up to the talus slope where, several years earlier, Miller had live-trapped a female golden eagle during fall migration. The rocks were icy, and they almost lost the frozen carcass off the deer sled on the steep hill. Paula was elated when she retrieved her photos and saw the talus slope golden eagle. But then she went up after 2 p.m. on Valentine’s Day to retrieve the most recent spruce grove photos. A big bird took off as she emerged from the spruces and approached the carcass. It was a golden
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Pennsylvania Game News - February 2013

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