It was a breezy day in late March 2025 when Kathleen Moreo carried a male juvenile Bald Eagle into the middle of a field in Osceola County and released it, a light GPS backpack in tow. As donors to a new study on eagle movement, Kathleen and her husband Jim were given access to a dashboard showing them each “ping” of the eagle’s backpack, allowing them to track the bird in real time through his first year and beyond. The data provides rare insight into one Bald Eagle’s day-to-day life and begins to answer questions about eagle migration and socialization in the early years.
Spring and Summer
Bald Eagle patient 2025-0085 arrived at the Audubon Center for Birds of Prey’s Raptor Trauma Clinic in February 2025 after falling from his nest on a utility pole as a chick. It was too dangerous to return him to the nest, so once he was cleared of injuries, the Center’s team scheduled his release in an area with a large population of Bald Eagles that could act as a surrogate family as he learned to survive on his own. For release, the team fitted him with a light GPS backpack, a silver federal ID band on one leg, and a black ID band on his other leg, denoting he hatched from a nest on a human-made structure.
Because of the GPS tracker, we know exactly where 2025-0085 went after release: He began exploring Central Florida, heading farther west until reaching Honeymoon Island. From there, he embarked on his first migration up the Atlantic Flyway, settling in Quebec, Canada for the summer. Without a GPS tracker, data collection like this would only be possible if he were spotted in each location, with his ID band visible and readable, and finders who felt motivated to report the sightings. With all this data at their fingertips, the Moreos looked forward to fall migration, when 2025-0085 would hopefully return to Florida.
Fall
Around Halloween, 2025-0085’s tracking data showed him back in Florida, not far from where the Moreos live. Kathleen volunteers with Audubon’s EagleWatch program, monitoring nests in Palm Beach County, and when she realized 2025-0085 flew to the same area as an EagleWatch-monitored nest, she kept an eye on the sky.
She found two juvenile Bald Eagles flying together over agricultural land surrounded by tall trees, one of which had leg bands. To match the telemetry data to the eagle before their eyes, the Moreos would need to either read the unique code on the bands or see the telemetry backpack. Without a professional camera, they zoomed in and hoped for the best.
Sure enough, the photos they took confirmed 2025-0085! Â When zoomed in, a black box-shaped GPS tracker is unmistakable on the bird’s back. Over the next couple of weeks, the Moreos made several more visits to the area in hopes of more sightings of 2025-0085. Each time, they observed him with at least one other juvenile.
Note: Never attempt to get close to Bald Eagles or follow them. They are protected by state and federal laws, and it is illegal to disturb them or their nests.
The Moreos’ observations, guided by the data from the GPS tracker, provide an example of the life of an orphaned Bald Eagle in its early years. Eaglets typically leave the nest at around 10-12 weeks old, but they stay with their parents for several more weeks as they learn to hunt and practice flying. 2025-0085 embarked on his life in the wild without parental guidance, but the Moreos observed him with other eagles — a found family, just as we hoped he would find.
