Two eagles observed flying along the Gaspé Peninsula in Quebec in August 2025 © Hugues Deglaire
In July 2025, BRI biologists Bill Hanson and Chris Persico banded a Bald Eagle nestling in Freeport as part of a long-term Bald Eagle contaminants monitoring project throughout the state of Maine. The leg bands put on these birds become a calling card of sorts, allowing us to follow its first great adventure across the Northeast, if we’re lucky enough to receive a photo of the color band etched with characters unique to this individual.
The zoomed in close up of the band. Could you decipher the combo?
Shortly after fledging, this eagle was documented by an amateur photographer and wildlife biologist near Forillon National Park on the Gaspé Peninsula in Quebec. This movement highlights the importance of the Atlantic flyway’s coastal corridors. The tree-lined, jagged coastlines of Quebec provide high-quality habitat, offering the eagle both protection and abundant foraging opportunities as it honed its ability to hunt fish and waterfowl in a maritime environment.
This roaming movement is not atypical for a young eagle. First-year eagles often travel widely across the landscape because they do not yet hold established nesting territories. Maine-hatched Bald Eagles have been documented from Quebec to Newfoundland and Labrador, all the way to the Chesapeake Bay and Lake Erie (Desorbo et al., 2020). Oftentimes, young (i.e., subadult) eagles will find areas of notable food abundance – such as the Sebasticook River in central Maine.
By February, the eagle was observed again by another photographer. This time, 600 miles away from Quebec, to the south in Massachusetts, near the Parker and Merrimack River estuaries. This shift reflects a typical opportunistic movement pattern for a young eagle. Unlike some species that fly to a fixed wintering ground, Bald Eagles are often “weather migrants,” moving only as far south as necessary to find open, ice-free water for fishing.
Bald Eagles flying near the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge in Massachusetts © Scott Selfridge
From a research perspective, this bird’s story highlights a vital lesson for photographers and citizen scientists alike. A large number of ‘encounters’ with banded Bald Eagles are reported by amateur photographers—many of which take incredibly high quality photos due in part to advances in digital photography. For the researcher, identifying banded birds can often involve some process of elimination. Even if a photographer captures only a partial digit or a specific color combination, that information can sometimes be cross-referenced with banding records to confirm an individual’s identity.
We encourage all photographers to pass along their photos of banded birds – even “imperfect” ones! Every partial sighting helps us map the survival and movement patterns of Maine’s Bald Eagle population, and this information commonly plays into conservation and management decision-making. Once we confirm the identity of individuals, these ‘band encounters’ are reported to the USGS Bird Banding Lab either directly by observers, or by BRI on behalf of the observers. The USGS BBL ensures that all such encounter information is available to the entire community of wildlife managers and researchers who request it.
To learn more about BRI’s ongoing efforts to understand movement patterns of Bald Eagles in Maine, read more here.
To learn more about Maine’s Bald Eagle population, please visit the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife website.
