The National Aviary, in collaboration with the Institute for Wildlife Studies (IWS) in California, has embarked on a program to study the migration of imperial eagles in Kazakhstan. The goal of this project is to identify movement and dispersal rates, as well as wintering grounds of this threatened species.

In the past few years we have outfitted three eagles with satellite telemetry devices (PTTs). These new generation devices are solar powered and if operating properly can last up to three years. They obtain GPS quality location fixes and then transmit a data packet with multiple locations via the ARGOS satellite system. These fixes are accurate to within a few meters and the PTTs we use are programmed to take fixes every hour during daylight, so if battery power is high we can get 10-15 fixes per day.

In 2004 we outfitted an eagle chick from a nest in northern Kazakhstan. That eagle traveled across central Asia to Iran; in northern Iran the transmitter failed. In 2006 we outfitted with PTTs two additional eagle chicks from the same area as in 2004. Each year for which we have data these birds appear to use a similar southbound migration pattern and use similar summer and wintering grounds. All of the data provided here are new to us. Previously the only thing we knew about imperial eagle migration came from 2001, when we put wing tags on several birds. That year a single eagle that we tagged was seen by a birdwatcher in Oman. Preliminary scoping of our telemetry data suggests that the individuals we are tracking are probably headed in the same general direction as that first bird.