Subject: Re: Bald vs. Golden Eagle (was Central District 11/5)
Date: Nov 14 12:33:57 1997
From: Michael Price - mprice at mindlink.bc.ca


Hi Tweets,

Rob Saecker writes:

>Interesting, I wouldn't have thought to caution against that mistake.

More accurately, an ambiguity which mocks the generalisation.

>I guess, having cut my teeth where goldens were year-round residents, and
>baldies winter residents, I came to regard their flight profiles as so
>different that one would never mistake one for the other, unless they were
>a looong way off.

For most of them the ID is straightforward; the ID problem is thrown up by a
small minority of immature Bald Eagles (BAEA) resembling adult Golden Eagles
(GOEA).

>The board flatness of a baldy vs. the slight dihedral of
>a golden;

Ha! Tell that to the male of the NW Marine Drive/Point Grey pair of BAEA!
That little ratso has fooled me *so* often that if I see an eagle with a
dihedral, I now assume automatically it's him, not a transient GOEA.

>the difference in cadence of powered flight;

Could you elaborate on your impressions of the difference?

>the head size
>difference;

Most of the time this is straightforward but there are some individual BAEA
(males?) which seem to be intermediate. I've just taken a look at the
photographic sections of Clark & Wheeler's 'Hawks' and Dunne, Sibley &
Sutton's 'Hawks in Flight' and in each a couple of the birds in those
photographs look pretty ambiguous in head/tail ratio and wing-shape. If you
saw them in silhouette only, not having the advantage of seeing plumage
details, they might be a fairly hard call.

>different habits and habitats...

GOEA migrating through the Georgia Depression (Vancouver Island, Gulf
Islands, San Juan Islands, SW mainland British Columbia) have to transit
what we think of as 'inappropriate' habitat for them but 'appropriate' for
BAEA. Some of the rainshadow areas actually offer appropriate GOEA habitat
but, lacking sufficient small-mammal populations to sustain a breeding
population, they've not colonised except on one of the San Juan Islands
where some fool deliberately and vengefully released rabbits when a zoning
decision went against him. Don't know if the GOEA's are still there.

>I hope I can find one of these
>fat, dark baldies to test myself sometime.

Rob, I'd wonder if mid-winter wouldn't be the best time to look: that's when
the BAEA's have bulked up on spawned-out salmon.

Michael Price We aren't flying...we're falling with style!
Vancouver BC Canada -Buzz Lightyear, Toy Story
mprice at mindlink.net