Thursday, June 26, 2014

Will The Real D20 Please Stand Up?

From RRP: "Which eaglet is which?" we're being asked on ustream, facebook, in our forum, and via email. We would usually have answered this question by now, but it's been a very unusual and busy year for all of us. Once we had a little breathing room, all of us got together and went over the photographs that have poured in since the eaglets began to re-appear following the difficult fledge that began on June 18. There is no one I would trust to help ID more than our wonderful moderators on Ustream and Facebook. From awesome daily 12-hour chats, and through wonderful Whatta's, our combined hours of detailed observation reach well into the thousands. However, I need to stress that these ID's are not cast in stone. Bob doesn't tend to ID without a highly unusual physical feature or (preferably) a band number. Fortunately, our not-so-little fledglings have features that provide us with a few clues to their identity. Without further ado, we believe that D19 has the transmitter, D20 is at SOAR, and D18 is the prodigal mulch pile baby who has "found us again", and we'll be switching to referring to them that way this afternoon. We initially believed that D20 had the transmitter, but the information and photos that have surfaced since make it clear that isn't the case.