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 Post subject: USA MIGRATION ~ 2011 - 2012
PostPosted: Tue Jan 03, 2012 10:28 pm 
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PLEASE START 2012 POSTS HERE

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EASTERN USA - Rob Bierregarrd


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 Post subject: Re: USA MIGRATION ~ 2011 - 2012
PostPosted: Sun Jan 08, 2012 12:01 am 
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From Rob 1/2/12

New Year's Greetings,

Just a quick update (haven't done the maps yet) about our Ospreys down in South America. All is well. Sr. Bones (Nantucket) is tucked into his mountain hideout. Belle (MVY from 2010) and Thatch (Delaware 2010) are down on the Madeira and Amazon Rivers, respectively, in Brazil. Their movements over the year have been really interesting. I'll do a year-end review for them soon. They should both be heading north for the first time in 4 or 5 months. North Fork Bob (Long Island) is back (again--2nd time on this migration!) at his wintering spot in the Guianan Shield highlands of southern Venezuela. Snowy (young from this year from Martha's Vineyard) is exploring Venezuela. He's found a spot he likes in the currently flooded Venezuelan llanos. This area will dry out soon (and look like it does in the maps on his page), so we suspect he will relocate. He has 16 months or so to find a reliable spot.

Thanks to all for your interest in Ospreys and our tracking work and your kind and encouraging emails over the years.

All the best for 2012--may it be full of the wonders of nature for all,

Rob

Rob Bierregaard
Distinguished Visiting Research Professor
Biology Dept
UNCCharlotte
704 516 4615
rbierreg@uncc.edu


North Fork Bob - map update


Snowy - map update


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 Post subject: Re: USA MIGRATION ~ 2011 - 2012
PostPosted: Tue Mar 06, 2012 8:10 pm 
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Rob, just sent an update :thumbup


At long last, I have updated maps for our 3 youngsters. Thatch's maps are really interesting. He and Belle should be heading north in April or May. This will be the first trip north for both birds. I don't like what I see in Snowy's maps. He's found a place in Venezuela that he likes, but I'm not sure it's a good place for him...

I didn't update maps for our 2 adult males because they're too boring! Neither has moved more than a couple of miles since they settled down on their wintering waters back in fall. The adults (North Fork Bob and Senor Bones) will be heading north sometime this month. Last year Bob headed north on 20 March, with Senor Bones starting the trip north a few days after that.

If you click on the link where I report the date of the latest updates, you'll go right to the most recent maps for that bird:
 

In my night shift work (owls), I've landed in a habitat that is weirdly free of Barred Owls. So I had to downsize. Here's a video clip of what's going on in the Screech Owl box I put up a few weeks ago:    


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 Post subject: Re: USA MIGRATION ~ 2011 - 2012
PostPosted: Tue Mar 06, 2012 8:41 pm 
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Thanks Jazzel I still get sad when I look at the maps and see the word LOST but it is great that thatch & belle will be heading north soon
Love that cutiepie owl :girlluv:

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 Post subject: Re: USA MIGRATION ~ 2011 - 2012
PostPosted: Fri Mar 23, 2012 12:40 pm 
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GOOD NEWS FROM ROB TODAY :valthumb:

Apologies to those of you who got a version of this message yesterday or a duplicate of this one--I'm having some issues with my new email system, which doesn't the number of addresses I was using in the 'Bcc:' box.

Glad to report that both North Fork Bob and Senor Bones are heading north. Bones got a bit of a headstart, leaving his wintering area around 11AM on the 20th. Bob left around 1:30 on the 21st. Last year Bob left on the 20th and Bones on 24th. Bones took a remarkable 14 days to get all the way back to Nantucket, where he successfully fledged young for the first time. Bob took 18 days to return to his nesting area. He did not breed last year.

I'll do new maps late next week. During the week, I'll be at a conference hosted by the manufacturer of our telemetry transmitters.

Fair winds,

Rob


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 Post subject: Re: USA MIGRATION ~ 2011 - 2012
PostPosted: Mon Apr 09, 2012 10:59 am 
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Good news and map updates from Rob :egg 19:

Good news from our birds. Sr. Bones got back to Nantucket on April 4th. North Fork Bob is somewhere between Richmond, VA, and New Jersey. As of this morning, he had about 420 miles to go before he gets back home.

Our two youngsters from 2010 are due to head north soon. Belle (from Martha's Vineyard) and Thatch (from Cape Henlopen, DE) should start north within the next month.


Maps are done for Bob, but only rudimentary for Bones



Not much narrative on his maps yet.

I'm in the midst of setting up a new page for the 2012 season, so navigation around the site is a bit of a mess.

Rob


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 Post subject: Re: USA MIGRATION ~ 2011 - 2012
PostPosted: Thu Apr 12, 2012 11:35 am 
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MORE GOOD NEWS FROM ROB...AND VERY INTERESTING, BOB'S MAP :egg 19:

Bob is home. Got there on the 8th. Check out his maps and then, if you live in the area, get out to Bechwood Rd with your binoculars and report back. We need intel!

Very cool set of maps:



Rob


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 Post subject: Re: USA MIGRATION ~ 2011 - 2012
PostPosted: Thu May 10, 2012 11:31 am 
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Migration update from Rob :egg 19:

Our two young from the class of 2010 are moving north. Both have crossed the Caribbean safely. Our DE bird, Thatch, was in Cuba when we last heard from him. Belle, from the Vineyard, is in Haiti. We're considering renaming her Phoenix after her recent resurrection. Her transmitter stopped moving for 26 hours and we were stone-cold certain she was dead. Then, 3 days later when her next download came, she was up and about flying all over Lake Saumatre, just east of Port au Prince.

Belle's and Thatch's are the new maps to check out:




Worried (Haiti's not a good place for and Osprey to linger), but no longer depressed,

Rob


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 Post subject: Re: USA MIGRATION ~ 2011 - 2012
PostPosted: Sun May 27, 2012 11:57 pm 
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Update from Rob today...all good :egg 19:

583 days, and over 9,000 miles after leaving home in Oct. 2010, our 2-yr old Osprey Belle is back on Martha's Vineyard.
Hers are the only maps I've updated recently. Thatch is chilling down on the Turtle River west of Brunswick, GA.
And I'm heading up into the north country of New Hampshire tomorrow to try to tag a couple of adult male Ospreys. Talons crossed!



Talons crossed,

Rob


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 Post subject: Re: USA MIGRATION ~ 2011 - 2012
PostPosted: Mon Oct 01, 2012 10:16 am 
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Rob has updated maps, very interesting.

The long silence from Map Central here is explained by almost all of our tagged birds deciding to move at once! Trying to keep up with the maps is like a game of whack-a-mole. As soon as I get one map ready I start working on another and then the first bird moves again, and so on... I need to remember to make the map showing where all the birds are at one time last!

The good news is that everyone is moving along nicely. Those strong north winds kicked up by the big cold front brought us delightful weather and brought the Ospreys a nice tail wind, and almost all of them took advantage of it. Further good news is that we don't have any brewing hurricanes on the Caribbean horizon. I don't need another year like 2010 ever. 

We've already got a bird out over the Caribbean, one in Haiti right behind her, a traffic jam of 3 birds in Cuba, Belle doing her usual very interesting stuff in the Bahamas, and two birds vying for the "last one out of New England, please turn out the lights" award. Our two birds that download via cell towers rather than satellites are providing us with really cool data--including locations through the night (make sure to check out Bridger's maps for a real surprise from these data).




Rob

Also, a couple of new migration sites.

Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, NY

Link to "Coley"



Ospreys being tracked from Jackson Hole, WY






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 Post subject: Re: USA MIGRATION ~ 2011 - 2012
PostPosted: Fri Oct 12, 2012 2:35 am 
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Osprey tracking project takes tragic turn
Published Date Written by Adam Drapcho
HOLDERNESS — Iain MacLeod, executive director of the Squam Lakes Natural Science Center, knew that tracking juvenile osprey on their first fall migration was not an activity for the faint of heart. Last year, he placed a transmitter on a young female, only to watch remotely as she fell victim to stormy weather and drowned in the Caribbean. Still, that experience didn't make it easy for MacLeod earlier this week when data from the transmitters on two locally-hatched birds started to tell traumatic tales.
MacLeod placed the transmitters on three local birds earlier this year as part of Project Osprey Track, a collaboration involving the Squam Lakes Natural Science Center, Public Service of New Hampshire and Dr. Richard "Rob" Bierregaard, a research professor with the University of North Carolina. Several birds have been affixed with transmitters, which send regular updates regarding the bird's location, altitude, direction and speed. Local birds involved in the project include "Art," an adult male who spends his summers in Bridgewater, and siblings "Chip" and "Jill," who hatched this spring in a nest in Tilton near the J. Jill building.
MacLeod is keeping a blog of the birds' progress, which can be found through the Natural Science Center's website, http://www.nhnature.org.
As expected, the veteran "Art" made his migration successfully and without drama. His transmitter shows him to be cruising through a remote part of Venezuela featuring lots of marshes and rivers, a great place for a fish-eating birds to spend the winter.
For "Jill" and "Chip," though, the picture is much darker. First-year ospreys have a low survival rate for their first migration — less than 50 percent. Those that avoid disaster will spend two years in South America, then, once they reach sexual maturity, they'll return to North America to find a mate and establish their own territory. Part of the goal in placing transmitters on young birds was to learn more about this process.
"Jill" seemed to be making a picture-perfect migration, making the flight from Tilton to South America — a voyage of 3,500 miles — in 25 straight days of flying. Once she passed the most treacherous portion, the open-water flight from Haiti to Columbia, MacLeod was able to breathe a sigh of relief. However, it seemed that danger was still waiting for "Jill." After making landfall in South America, she continued flying south, some 835 miles, until reaching a very remote part of the Amazon rain forest. The first sign of trouble was on October 6 and 7, when her transmitter kept reporting the same, static location. Weather reports showed storms over that location at that time, so MacLeod held out hope that she had found a good place to wait out the wind and rain. However, the sun is shining again on Brazil, and the transmitter hasn't send another signal.
"We haven't gotten a peep from Jill," said MacLeod. "I'm pretty sure we've lost her." While he'll never be certain of her fate, he suspects she fell victim to predation. Osprey are known to fall prey to larger raptors, owls and eagles, especially. She also could have been killed by an opportunistic mammal, such as a jaguar or other large cat. "There's all kinds of stuff in the jungle down there," he said. "I think she ran out of luck."
Although "Chip" is still alive, it appears, MacLeod isn't hopeful for his survival, either. "Chip's" migration was an odd one from the beginning. He set out earlier than most osprey but stalled, for more than a month, along the Narragensett River in Rhode Island — he was still there by the time "Jill" reached Colombia. Then, on October 7, he finally headed off again, choosing a due south course that took him over the coastal waters of the Atlantic Ocean. That evening, the data suggests, he landed on a ship to spend the night. Unfortunately for him, the ship was headed east, and he was 300 miles off the coast by the morning of Oct. 8.
"Unfortunately, Chip has made terrible decisions," said MacLeod. The data seems to show that "Chip' has flown from the first ship to another, then to a third ship. "All of the boats have been in the completely wrong direction." The most recent data showed "Chip" more than 1,000 miles from the North Carolina coast.
If he is to survive, "Chip" will have to see his fortunes completely reversed. "The only hope he has is that he'll jump on another boat heading back the other way."
Adding to MacLeod's angst is the thought that "Chip" likely hasn't eaten in a few days. Osprey aren't particularly adept at catching fish in open sea, so he'd have to find a school of fish that was near the water's surface at a time when the ocean was particularly placid. Osprey aren't able to eat while on the water or while flying, so "Chip" would then have to have a ship to land on while he ate the fish.
A last hope — and it's about as long as odds get — is that "Chip" is able to endure the eastward journey, somehow finding enough food to survive, and make landfall in Africa, where European ospreys spend their winters. While that's a terribly unlikely circumstance, it would surely make "Chip" legendary among biologists, who would watch with fascination as "Chip" decides what to do next. "It would be an amazing thing, but a big stretch," said MacLeod. That being said, "Chip's" antics are already well outside of the parameters of what MacLeod or Bierregaard have observed of osprey behavior.
"Chip is breaking the mold in extremes," MacLeod said.
Despite the outcome, MacLeod doesn't regret participating in the osprey-tracking project. "It's been sad, but it's been fascinating (to see) just how wrong a migration can go." The data also shows just how hard the birds struggle every year, and why so few of them survive their first migration.
MacLeod will continue to watch Art's movements this winter, as well as those of other birds in the project. Next year, he expects to place transmitters on at least four more local birds. "I think this technology teaches amazing things that we would never know about ospreys

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 Post subject: Re: USA MIGRATION ~ 2011 - 2012
PostPosted: Fri Oct 12, 2012 8:45 am 
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Thanks Jazzel and Kitten-this info is so interesting!

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 Post subject: Re: USA MIGRATION ~ 2011 - 2012
PostPosted: Tue Oct 16, 2012 11:28 pm 
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Rob has updated maps....don't give up on"CHIP" :suchdrama:

It's been a very busy couple of weeks with some sad and some very interesting news.

But before we get to that, it's never too early to begin planning next year's tagging. We had fascinating results with the new cell-tower transmitters and are planning to deploy at least 2 on Martha's Vineyard on adult males. At their nests, we will install motion activated video recorders at their feeding perches, so we'll be able to see exactly where the birds are going to fish and what they're bringing home. We'll also tag some more juveniles, adding to our growing data base for them.

I'd like to explore the prospects of "crowd sourcing" the funding for one of next year's transmitters, and the "crowd" I'm looking at are the 700+ Osprey fans who receive these email updates and follow the work we've been doing for over a decade. Before I work on the logistics of receiving donations so they're tax-deductible, I want to get a sense of the level of support we might receive. So, if you're inclined to donate to the effort, would you send me an email and let me know how much you would contribute? Our target for each transmitter is about $5K--and if a single person wants to step up, that would certainly make life easy ;-).

OK, on to the news. As always, there's good news and bad news. The good news is that the hurricane season was pretty much a non-event this fall, so all the birds headed that way made it across in a cake walk--no 57-hour, 1100 mile storm-tossed odysseys like Thatch lived through back in 2010.

We lost track of Rammie and Bridger, the two Westport River birds we tagged with cell-tower transmitters, but I think this is a function of the transmitters, and not the loss of the birds. We may not hear from them again until they get home in the spring.

North-Fork Bob is still in Cuba heading south, but the Caribbean looks clear for a while, so I'm not too worried about him.

Sr. Bones is already back in his winter home in the mountains of Colombia. Thatch (3-yr old from DE), Belle (3-yr old from MVY), and Art (NH adult) are all moving south through South America.

Two of the birds who crossed the Caribbean died. Cutch (newly tagged adult from Long Island) impaled himself on a submerged snag trying to catch a fish in a small reservoir in northern Colombia. His body was turned in to the Colombian version of the FIsh and Wildlife Service. When I convince them that they cannot use the transmitter on a flamingo, I hope we'll get that transmitter back. Jill (juvenile from NH) was leading the flock across South America when she stopped moving deep in the Amazonian rainforest. We have no idea what happened to her and can only assume some large raptor took her down. She had migrated every day since leaving her nest in New Hampshire on the 10th of September.

Finally, our young male from New Hampshire, Chip, is on a most bizarre journey. To say that he is taking the path less traveled would be an understatement of epic proportions. I'm not going to spoil it, so you'll have to go to his maps to see for yourselves:


Rob


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 Post subject: Re: USA MIGRATION ~ 2011 - 2012
PostPosted: Tue Oct 16, 2012 11:53 pm 
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:sum10: Well I sure hope Chip is just a lazy fellow and staying on board the ship thanks jazzel

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 Post subject: Re: USA MIGRATION ~ 2011 - 2012
PostPosted: Wed Oct 17, 2012 1:05 pm 
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Thanks Jazzel and Kitten...
Yep-Staying on the ship and eating tuna :)

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 Post subject: Re: USA MIGRATION ~ 2011 - 2012
PostPosted: Thu Oct 18, 2012 12:30 am 
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geeeeeeeeeeeez. . .that's quite the report. . I sure hope he turns up safe!!! Maybe he's gonna spend the winter in the life of luxury, on a ship, being tossed choice morsels of yummy fish!!!


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 Post subject: Re: USA MIGRATION ~ 2011 - 2012
PostPosted: Fri Oct 19, 2012 7:41 pm 
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Sad update from Rob today.....CHIP didn't make it :thud :sosad2 But what an amazing bird, from an egg 6 months ago, great genes.... Take heart, he didn't die, as so many do, at the hands of humans.

Rob Bierregaard <rbierreg@gmail.com> Oct 18 11:04AM -0700

Chip did not make it, which is not surprising. He is, after all, an Osprey
and not an albatross! He went down on the 14th after a week at sea, during
which time he probably didn't eat. A sad end to a wild ride!


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 Post subject: Re: USA MIGRATION ~ 2011 - 2012
PostPosted: Sat Oct 20, 2012 9:41 pm 
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Oh no!!! Not the news I wanted to read. . :sorrow:


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 Post subject: Re: USA MIGRATION ~ 2011 - 2012
PostPosted: Sun Oct 21, 2012 4:22 pm 
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Sorry to read about Chip. I was hoping he was on a great adventure. :cryinggirl:

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 Post subject: Re: USA MIGRATION ~ 2011 - 2012
PostPosted: Mon Oct 22, 2012 8:43 am 
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:sum7:
Jazzel - Thanks for letting us know about Chip...

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