Catching a thermal

Our first GPS tagged Verreaux's eagle "Pop" has now been collecting and transmitting data for exactly two weeks. It has been quite incredible for me to see exactly what he has been up to. There are so many times in the field when an eagle I am watching disappears over a mountain ridge and I am left wondering just how far it has gone. I now can already see a much clearer picture of what a day in the life of a Verreaux's eagle is like. Here I can share with you some of the first high resolution data we have recieved. It covers 6 minutes, tracking the eagles position every 3 seconds. The upwards spiral in the picture started at 14h04, and the bird took three minutes to gain height from an altitude of 1309 m to 1663 m, and its climb rate was 1.97 m/sec. The long glide covers 3.7 km, and lasted three minutes, at a speed of 22 m/s.

This project is a partnership between the Animal Demography Unit and  a team of researchers who developed the tag we are using (UVA-BiTS) at the Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics, University of Amsterdam (UvA) in the Netherlands. I would like to take this opportunity to thanks the team, in particular Prof Willem Bouten, for all of their hard work and their willingness to give their time and expertise to make this happen.