Bald eagles of the Hanford National Environmental Research Park

Technical Report · Sun Jun 01 04:00:00 EDT 1980

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/6580437· OSTI ID:6580437

Fitzner, R. E.; Watson, D. G.; Rickard, W. H.

Since 1961, near-yearly aerial surveys of bald eagles along the Hanford reach of the Columbia River have been conducted. Prey resources available to the eagles have also been monitored and we have thus been able to examine predator-prey relationships in a statistical fashion. We report on a unique set of data which provides insight into one of the factors (prey availability) controlling bald eagle wintering populations. The winter distribution of the bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) has been reported to closely follow the availability of prey (Servheen 1975, Southern 1963, Shea 1973, Spencer 1976). Fitzner and Hanson (1979) compared twelve years of eagle winter survey data on the Hanford DOE Site with waterfowl numbers and salmon redd densities over the same period and provided some statistical evidence that eagle wintering numbers varied somewhat dependently with changing salmon redd numbers but not with changing waterfowl numbers. This report re-examines Fitzner and Hanson's (1979) twelve year data set and supplies two additional years of data for the Hanford DOE Site in order to gain additional insight into predator-prey interactions.

• Research Organization: Battelle Pacific Northwest Labs., Richland, WA (USA)
• OSTI ID: 6580437
• Report Number(s): PNL-SA-8504
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

510100* -- Environment
Terrestrial-- Basic Studies-- (-1989)
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
ANIMALS
BIRDS
DATA
DATA COMPILATION
ECOLOGY
HANFORD RESERVATION
INFORMATION
NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
NUMERICAL DATA
POPULATION DYNAMICS
PREDATOR-PREY INTERACTIONS
US DOE
US ERDA
US ORGANIZATIONS
VERTEBRATES