Detection/non-detection data on territorial pairs of golden eagles in coastal southern California, 2016-2017

This dataset contains detection-nondetection data for territorial pairs of Golden Eagles at survey sites randomly selected from a grid of equal-sized (13.9 km2) hexagonal sample cells overlaid across the region of interest in Coastal Southern California during 2016 and 2017. We partitioned surveys within seasons based on approximate transition dates for stages in the breeding cycle of golden eagles in the study region: courtship (15 Dec-28 Feb), incubation (1 Mar-30 Apr), nestling (1 May-15 Jun), and the fledging-dependency period (16 June-Jul 30), totaling 4 possible sampling periods per year. This dataset also describes the proportion of land-cover types from four general categories (urban, open grassland, scrub and shrub vegetation, and forest cover) and mean terrain ruggedness index (TRI) in each site.