North Fork Bob - 2013
'09 maps for: Bea -- Buck -- Caley -- Claws -- Conomo -- Hix -- Hudson 09 -- Isabel -- Katy -- L.R. --
Moffet -- Mr. Hannah -- Ozzie -- Penelope -- Rafael
2010 maps for: Belle -- Buck -- Gunny -- Hudson -- Mr. Hannah -- Neale -- North Fork Bob -- Penelope -- Sanford -- Sr. Bones -- Thatch
2011 maps: Belle -- Buck -- Henrietta -- Katbird -- North Fork Bob -- Pemi -- Saco -- Sanford -- Sr. Bones -- Snowy -- Thatch -- Tucker
2012 maps: Art -- Belle -- Bridger -- Chip -- Cutch -- Jill -- North Fork Bob -- Rammie -- Snowy -- Sr. Bones -- Thatch
2013 maps: Art -- Belle -- Bridger -- DJ -- Donovan -- Edwin -- Icarius -- Mackenzie -- Nick -- North Fork Bob --
Quin -- Rammie -- Rodney -- Ron -- Snowy -- Sr. Bones -- Tango -- Woody
Osprey main page -- Migration page -- Migration09 -- Migration10 -- Migration 11 -- Migration 12 -- Migration 13 -- Home Page

15 Mar-4 Apr 2013. Bob made it home in 21 days, with not a single day off. This was a bird on a mission. He left 5-6 days earlier than in previous years. Maybe he remembers getting run off the pole he tried to claim last spring and wants to get there earlier this year.      His two previous spring trips were almost identical, as we'll see in the more detailed maps.      He took 18 days to get back to Long Island both last year and the year before. He does not dawdle.

	1 Dec 2012 - 10 Mar 2013. Here's a close-up of his activity. The resolution's pretty bad. The dark strip running up and down the image is the Rio Ventuari. He does hang out along the river some, but most of his activity is along a small lake just beside the river. He obviously has some perches he likes--where you can see the balloons stacked up.
	15-18 Mar 2013. Bob is heading home 5-6 days earlier than the previous two trips we've followed. He pretty much kept to his script as far as his route goes, except he zigged east when he got to some serious mountains where he had zagged west in the previous two trips.
	17-18 Mar 2013. Here's a rather busy map! The blue track is Rammie, our adult male from the Westport River, who flew through this area a day ahead of Bob. Rather than stay over land, he decided to cross the Gulf of Venezuela and was last heard from on the Guajira Peninsula, which, if you've been following these maps for any time at all, should be very familiar.      Bob takes a different route, going up the Paraguana Peninsula before taking off for Hispaniola. This year he took an easterly route around some high mountains.
	17-18 Mar 2013. Here's Bob deciding to take the long route instead of the big climb over the mountains.
	19-25 Mar 2013. While Bob is only the second bird we've tracked to make three complete migration cycles (Sr. Bones is the other), we've had quite a few do two cycles. We've never seen a bird retrace its wingbeats so closely as did Bob this year (and last).      This is the classic route taken by adults on their spring migrations.
	7-18 Mar 2013. Bob is a creature of habit. I won't get into much detail here, as we've seen this before. There are section of the trip where he flew almost exactly the same route and other sections where he was a few dozens of miles east or west of previous spring trips.
	4 Apr 2013. Bob made a very surprising trip to Connecticut within hours of arriving back on the North Fork.      The icon labeled "House for sale" is the nest he's been trying to occupy for the past couple of years. My spies on that marsh tell me that a pair of Ospreys was already established on the pole and working on the nest. Maybe Bob got home and found "his" nest occupied and went over to Connecticut to pout.      This nest had been productive for years. Last year, when Bob tried to move in, there were a bunch of Ospreys fighting over the platform. There was so much strife that no pair could establish themselves and for the first time in years, no young were produced at this nest.      These scenarios are very common when one or both of the adults that have been using a nest for years don't make it back from migration.
	4-11 Apr 2013. Bob made another short trip across Long Island Sound. Then he cruised around much of eastern Long Island. The cluster of points west of Peconc Bay are along the Peconic River, which is always a favorite spot for him.
	4 Apr-5 May 2013. These are all the points we have for Bob around Mattituck. The NFGC Nest is where we trapped him back in 2010. We were trying to catch a juvenile and had the nest baited with fresh fish. Bob, who didn't belong to that nest, saw the fish lying in the nest and figured if no one else wanted it, he'd take it. He got a new transmitter instead of the fish. The NFB Cell Tower Nest marker is where he hung out a lot during the summer of 2010. There had been an Osprey nest on the cell tower, but it was removed by a tower maintenance crew. We don't know if it was a complete nest, or just a "housekeeping" nest, where young pairs who aren't quite ready to breed go through most of the motions.      Reports have come in that birds are building on the tower again, but it's clearly not Bob this time.
	4 Apr-5 May 2013. Bob was spotted on Apr 30th flying by the nest with a big fat bunker (menhaden) in his talons.
	12-18 Apr 2013. Not much going on now. We'll just watch his movements week-by-week as the summer progresses. Too late now to get a nest going, so Bob will have to wait until next year to find an unoccupied nest site and mate to his liking.
	19-25 Apr 2013. Not much new here, except for a visit to Gardiner's Island, where 300 pairs of Ospreys once nested, before the DDT crash.
	26 Apr-2 May 2013. (The dates  on the label on the map are incorrect). Pretty much same old, same old. He does slum it a bit down on the South Fork at  a few fishing holes he likes.      He's not fishing out in the Bay, so it looks like the big schools of bunker (menhaden) haven't arrived yet.