In Davao

I am in Davao now, and will be for the next 2 weeks. I met with Jayson at the PEF yesterday and we devised a plan for me. I will go into the field next Monday or Tuesday for a few days with one of the biologists to observe an eagle nest. The nest is on Mt. Apo, so it is not very far from here. My project is to record the vocalizations of the nesting eagles. When I get back, I will then do playbacks to the eagles at the Breeding Center and observe what they do. Our hope is that they will react with at least vocalizations, and perhaps by moving toward the source of the sound. If they do, PEF will use playbacks in their surveys for eagles in the wild. This would really speed up the process of locating eagles. Right now they rely on going into the forest (usually hiking in for at least a couple of days) and then looking for them flying or soaring, and listening for them. This strategy may be assisted with information from local people about where they may have seen or heard eagles. This strategy relies to a great extent on luck, because the eagles would need to be flying or soaring at the time you are looking. But with playbacks, you don't have to wait for the birds to appear--you can force them to appear. If this works, and actually even if it doesn't, I think there is aresearch paper that would come out of it.

In the mean time I am also editing a report on a habitat study in Mindanao that needs to be finished up and that Jayson has been too busy to get to.

I am very excited to not only be going into the field, but to actually be doing a little research project! And I'll get to see the eagles inthe wild!