It’s the mud season in eastern Idaho. The reservoirs are filling, the ground is greening and the birds are back. The birds are the reason researcher Michael Whitfield is in the woods.
“Every spring there’s that anticipation of seeing if such and such eagle is still around,” says Michael Whitfield, Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem Project principal researcher for Idaho. “If they’re successfully nesting and if they survive.”
Whitfield started banding bald eagles more than 30 years ago, back when barely a dozen eagle pairs nested along the South Fork of the Snake River. Now he keeps track of more than 80 nests by putting leg bands on baby baldies for tracking purposes.
–Kris Millgate