Young Bald Eaglet Is Banded, Has Growth Checkup At Duke Farms

HILLSBOROUGH, NJ — The lone surviving Bald Eagle chick at the nest in Duke Farms is a healthy boy.

The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection's Fish and Wildlife - Endangered and Nongame Species Program biologists visited the bald eagle nest Monday to band the young eaglet.

During the eagle banding, the eagle gets banded, measured (wing feather, tarsus, hallux, bill depth, culmen length) to determine age and sex, and a blood sample is taken to measure any contaminants, according to Betsy Chao with Duke Farms in Hillsborough.

The checkup showed the chick is about 6 weeks old and a healthy boy. The chick will most likely fledge, or become capable of flying, by the middle of May, said Nora DiChiara of Duke Farms.

The eaglet is the only remaining chick at the nest after one died in March. It was suspected that there was an underlying problem the chick was born with, according to Duke Farms. Read More: 1 Bald Eagle Chick Dies, Remaining Chick Thrives At Duke Farms

The NJ Endangered and Nongame Species Program has been banding eagles with green (NJ specific) bands since 1987, said Chao.

Eagles get banded when they hit roughly six weeks of age. They get two bands – a green NJ band on one leg and a silver federal band on the other. The state band has a letter over a two-digit number. The band info is recorded into the National Bird Banding Lab database, said Chao.

"When someone finds an injured or dead eagle, they can report the band (if there is one). Most of the info that comes in from these bands are from dead or injured birds. The bands help to ID when and where the bird was banded," said Chao.

There are more than 220 pairs of nesting eagles in the state of New Jersey with at least one bird in each pair being banded.

To catch a glimpse of the eaglet and his bald eagle parents, watch the Dukes Farms camera live at dukefarms.org/eaglecam or see below:

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