SHEPHERDSTOWN (NCTC) ~ April-December 2011

SusanE · **Posted:** Fri Apr 01, 2011 8:29 pm

PLEASE CONTINUE YOUR SHEPHERDSTOWN POSTS HERE!

Cam Links:

Live cam-->

--or--

Still cam-->

Nest location: On the grounds of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's NCTC (National Conservation Training Center) -- on the Potomac River near Shepherdstown, West Virginia

Belle (female) & Shep (male)

Mick · **Posted:** Thu Apr 14, 2011 6:20 pm

Update from NCTC:
"Yesterday we were contacted by the National Park Service at Antietam. They recently found a dead bald eagle near the Burnside Bridge parking lot and wanted to let NCTC know. We went over and examined the bird, which had been dead for about two weeks , they are estimating. We took a series of measurements, and those show that this could very well be a male bird. Final identification is not possible without a necropsy. The standard procedure for this type of thing is to transfer the bird to the FWS Eagle Repository in Denver. This will happen very soon.
We will never know if this bird is our missing male, but it could be. I will post more as we get more info."

An additional comment from the Facebook wall, separate from the update,

"The fact that the dead eagle did not appear to have a brood patch is absolutely a good sign. Liberty was seen on approximately March 20 WITH his brood patch intact. The dead eagle died near the end of March or the beginning of April, and those who know about eagles do not think a brood patch would have disappeared by then. Hopefully the necropsy will confirm the initial visual inspection of the bird that showed no signs of a brood patch."

kittenface · **Posted:** Thu Apr 14, 2011 6:21 pm

Oh no

Mick · **Posted:** Thu Apr 14, 2011 6:25 pm

They are now beginning to call the new bird "T-Bird" ('truder bird).

Belle and T-Bird visited the nest together for 10 minutes this morning.

SusanE · **Posted:** Thu Apr 14, 2011 7:25 pm

Whoever that eagle is, it is very sad to hear. They didn't say if there were any visible injuries. Maybe it died of old age . . . ?

Mick · **Posted:** Fri Apr 15, 2011 12:09 pm

This is from the Facebook wall, which is the eagle cam wall, not the actual NCTC organization. The NCTC web page has not been updated to include this information.

NCTC Eagle Cam
Update: The bird found at Antietam did not have a brood patch, confirmed now. We will do our best to still get the bird "sexed" once it is in Denver.
This is a good sign. :)

PattiO · **Posted:** Sat Apr 30, 2011 12:10 am

From the Blog today ..... they found another dead eagle. :(

Quote:

We have additional news that could relate to our missing resident male. A few days ago, our land manager found the remains of a bald eagle near the waste water treatment plant. The bird was not in good shape, so performing a post-mortem on it is not really possible. The degree of decomposition and proximity to the nest indicates to us that there is a good chance that this is our missing bird.

We will never know for sure though.

Wanted to let you folks know about this as soon as I could. It has been a rough season for bald eagles around the Region.

Everybody please take care.

SusanE · **Posted:** Sat Apr 30, 2011 8:49 am

bev. · **Posted:** Mon May 02, 2011 10:33 pm

I want to believe that it is not Liberty. So I shall

kittenface · **Posted:** Thu May 05, 2011 6:49 pm

Well it has taken me this long to open the camera here and when I did look what I found
they are a beautiful couple still hard to think about all that has happened but I have to move on