Interesting eagle behavior

I've been watching the activity at the 2 OK eagle nests fitted with cams. Some interesting pics on the site of an apparent fight that resulted in the death of a young male eagle that wandered into a nesting pairs' territory. Read and see pics at http://www.suttoncenter.org/pages/live_eagle_camera

I noticed some aggressive behavior on the part of the larger chick yesterday. Was pecking and pushing the smaller one. Hope the little guy makes it. Sometimes nature seems cruel.

Pic of the dead eagle with the nest and one of the breeding pair overhead. Located near Sooner Lake in North-central OK. Photo courtesy of the Sutton Avian Research Center.

This message was edited Feb 26, 2011 7:59 AM

Looks like Bald Eagle has reached its sustainable population in the area. This, and the starving eagles in the other thread, have this in common.

History is a heavy period of first, human persecution, and second, persistent organochlorine pesticide poisoning, left Bald Eagle numbers at a very low level. Once these problems were sorted, the birds had very good survival (plenty of food, no nasty neighbours to worry about), so the population rose. But now it has reached the limit of what the habitat can take, and density-dependent mortality starts - birds dying because they can't find enough food, or because they're being attacked by existing pairs defending their territories.

As long as populations stay high, incidents like these will become the main causes of Bald Eagle mortality. Don't be surprised to hear of more.

Resin

I don't think eagles have anywhere near reached the capacities of their habitat here, but there are certainly more and they will fight to defend their territories. There are 102 known active nests in OK leaving thousands of miles of shoreline that are still not inhabited.

A few decades ago I used to observe density dependent behavior in bobwhite quail pops. Local researchers first discovered that they often moved miles in the fall to reshuffle pops. It was previously thought a bw lived and died on a few acres. Sadly, the current situation is a severe lack of density. :-(

The little ones sure are cute. I hope the outcome of the one picking on the other doesn't turn out like Margaret's osprey babies.