21 September 2018

by Mike McGrady and Bernd Meyburg

162312 is making rapid progress on migration.  Most recently it was just outside the famous city of Qom, Iran.  It has made steady progress, covering about 1000 km in three days.  See map below.

Movements of Steppe eagle (162312) during autumn migration, 2018.

In Qom, the eagle has visited what appears to be the municipal rubbish dump (Image below).  Rubbish dumps are a potential source of food for scavenging birds like this eagle or like Egyptian vultures, which also migrate along this flyway.  However, they are also a potential hazard if they expose scavengers to toxic material or if the power lines around the dump sites are an electrocution threat.  Iran Bird and Powerline Protection Committee can be visited on Twitter https://twitter.com/ibplc2017?lang=en

162312 apparently visited a waste site outside of Qom, Iran.

1-18 September

Bernd Meyburg and Mike McGrady write:

One of the Steppe eagles (162312) has indeed started to migrate in earnest.  It left its summering area in west central Kazakhstan around 1 September, and is now near Serdar, Turkmenistan, near the Iran border.  It has flown over 1600 km since leaving its summering area.

We have not heard from the other eagle we are tracking since late July.  However, over much of the summer that bird was out of GSM range, so could not transmit its data.  Hopefully, it will soon start to migrate past places within the GSM network and we can see that it is alive and find out what it has been doing for much of the past 5 months!

An expanded team that includes Bernd Meyburg and Faisal Al Lamki is making plans to fit more tags to Steppe eagles wintering in Oman in January.  This work will be supported by the Bernd Meyburg Foundation for Raptor Research and Conservation, the Anglo-Omani Society, and The Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association, and more partners will be joining us in the near future

Movements of a Steppe eagle (162312) during 1-18 September 2018.