The Channel Islands’ Bald Eagle Brothers
A-04, the Shyest of the Siblings, Is Spotted at San Miguel Island
As we dodged northwest swell while kayaking around Castle Rock, Point Bennett, and the pocket beaches of San Miguel Island, we could hear the barks, bellows, and snorts of crowded pinniped colonies. However, once we arrived at Cardwell Point, it wasn’t the marine mammals that garnered our attention. It was a mature bald eagle that had us all sitting up straight in our kayaks.
The eagle had the customary blue wing tags that many possess in the Channel Islands National Park. They’re also equipped with a Global Positioning System (GPS). I yanked my binoculars out of my drybag and honed in on the steely eyed bird. It was then I got a bead on its number ― A-04, a 6-year-old male.
A-04 is the rarely seen, low-key brother of A-02 and A-03. “A-04 is a male from the 2017 Fraser Point nest,” said Dr. Peter Sharpe with the Institute for Wildlife Studies, which has been instrumental in returning bald eagles to the Channel Islands since 2002. “We have not been out on San Miguel” ― the most remote of the three northern isles ― “since 2017, so we have no idea what is going on there with eagles.” Part of that inactivity was due to the COVID-19 pandemic, when monitoring these majestic raptors took a backseat.
