Golden Eagles Up Close: teacher key

Golden Eagles, grade 8 edition, written for 8th grade. How golden eagles look, hunt, fly and nest, how scientists follow them with GPS tags, and how the birds are protected.

Read the book. Print this page for the key.

Questions and answers

1. How often did the GPS tags in one migration study record a location?
   • Once a year
   • Every 15 minutes (answer)
   • Every week
2. In the GPS study, which migrants traveled farther each day on average?
   • Autumn migrants
   • They traveled the same distance
   • Spring migrants (answer)
3. How do park biologists in Denali monitor nesting success?
   • With two annual aerial surveys from a small helicopter (answer)
   • By climbing every cliff
   • By counting feathers
4. How many eggs does a golden eagle pair usually have?
   • Usually two (answer)
   • Usually ten
   • None
5. Golden eagles see extremely well in daylight but no better than people at night. When would you expect them to hunt?
   • In daylight (answer)
   • Only at night
   • Only in winter
6. What does thermal mean in: thermal updrafts?
   • A kind of nest
   • Rising warm air (answer)
   • A loud call

Words

• transmitters: signal tags
• thermal: rising warm air
• brooding: sitting over
• escarpments: steep slopes
• incubation: warming eggs