While in Tasmania recently, I was very excited to receive a phonecall from my friend and expert wildlife journalist Vicki Laurie, who was keen to hear the latest news about my eagle-tracking research. My mind raced back to the above scene from October when I captured a photo of Malya's mother delivering a freshly killed goanna to feed her month-old chick, and we had a great chat about the most recently satellite-tagged Matuwa wedgies, and the findings from last season's research, whose current prime sponsor is the awesome Goldfield's Environmental Management Group (GEMG). Today the wonderful article that Vicki produced was printed in The Australian newspaper, and it was very exciting to see our Malya making his star appearance!
You can click the image below to enlarge and read the full article, or view the online version here. And if you are new to the eagle-tracking world, don't forget to zip back in time to read about the day we sat-tagged Malya.
If you are keen to read more of Vicki's wonderful wildlife writing, I thoroughly recommend her most recent book "The South-west: Australia's Biodiversity Hotspot," which you can find at the University of Western Australia's website.
Our
most recently satellite-tagged Walluwurru Malya has continued to spread
his wings and now appears to be ranging over most of his parents'
territory, which, as you saw last time, is the 'neighbouring property' of our beautiful adult male Wallu. These two eagle territories are shown
in red and blue on the above map. During the last few weeks, our
'teenage' wanderer Kuyurnpa drifted in from the east, homing in on a
long-range (~300 km) exploratory loop to spend a single night roosting
at Matuwa. This creates an exciting opportunity to summarise our three
arid-zone eagles currently being satellite-tracked:
- Wallu, a ~10 year-old mature adult who remains sedentary in a fixed home range, where he has stayed for 3.5+ years;
- Kuyurnpa,
a 4th year immature who is still in her dispersal/wandering phase,
moving freely through the arid interior with occasional 'return visits'
to her natal territory;
- Malya,
a 1st year juvenile currently still in the post-fledging period in his
natal territory, where he will be dependent on his parents until the
dispersal phase begins in several months.
These birds represent the three different stages a Wedge-tailed Eagle's undergoes during its life, and it
is exciting to be monitoring one arid-born eagle from each
stage! I am super excited to know when Malya will begin dispersal, and
when (if!?) Kuyurnpa will settle in a breeding territory. Let's keep on
tracking and find out!
It is now almost 2 months since Malya fledged, and his progress has been amazing! Initial movements of 50 - 100 m from the nest (shown by the pink pin on the above map) continued over the first fortnight, and soon the young male eagle was roosting in a tall tree just over 1 km from the eyrie (which, coincidentally, I had climbed the day of his tagging, to photograph an oncoming thunderstorm!).
These short bursts were rapidly replaced by longer flights of over 100 m, and in the last month of tracking, Malya has spread his wings widely and travelled across an area with a radius of just over 6 km. He has also been recorded soaring to great heights, reaching altitudes of over 2000 m on some of the warmer days.
Malya's parents' territory happens to be adjacent to that of Wallu, our 'founding member' of the eagle tracking family, and zooming out provides a comparison of the 2 birds' movements during the past 8 weeks. The dark, diagonal line shown on the below map (click to enlarge) is a ridge running north-west to south-east, a landform which appears to form the northern boundary of Wallu's territory. So far these two birds have not overlapped, but it is important to keep in mind a juvenile like Malya may be tolerated 'intruding' on another adult's patch, unlike one of his parents. It is great to be able to have this context of two arid-zone wedgies
