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	13 Nov -- Wow! And we thought Felix's trip was impressive. About 2 months late, Luke finally decided to make up for lost time. He took off at 6PM on the 7th and a mere fifty-some hours later was in the Bahamas. This is the longest over-water crossing ever recorded for an Osprey tracked via satellite telemetry. The whole trip was 1,490 miles (2,400 km).       Luke can claim the record for longest straight line water crossing, but a young Osprey tagged in Scotland holds the record for the longest time out over the ocean--60 hours. After being blown off course trying to cross the Bay of Biscay (France to Portugal), this young female missed Portugal and flew around for 60 hours before finally working east and finding Portugal. Click here to see this trip (but don't forget to come back!).      Back to our boy, Luke. Luke's transmitter collects data for 12 hours and then shuts down for 12, so each segment of the trip on the map (dots or no dots) represents 12 hours in the air, and we can figure out his average rate of speed out over the water. He clearly had a tail wind on the first day, and then the wind switched into his face. His speeds through each 12-hour stretch were 33 mph, 31 mph, 24 mph, and 18 mph (in km/hr: 53, 50, 39, and 29).       His GPS unit wasn't functioning when he landed, so we don't know exactly where he touched down in the evening of the 9th or the early hours of the 10th. The last fix we had for him was 51 hours after he took off. At that time he had at least 3-6 hours of flying to do before he could touch down and rest.      Amazingly, he didn't stop to rest more than the morning of the 10th, leaving his landfall on Little Inagua Island (apparently a very dry place) just after 13:00h. He arrived in Haiti that evening. From there he pressed on, moving into the Dominican Republic on the 13th.      Lest we get too impressed with Luke's travels, we do need to remember that there are warblers (weighing in at less than an ounce) that make an even longer trip out over the Atlantic. They leave New England heading SE, passing out around Bermuda before the Trade Winds push them back to the Antilles and even all the way to South America. And of course the kings/queens of the macho migrants are the Bar-tailed Godwits that do New Zealand to Alaska in 6 days of non-stop flying.      But we're still proud of our boy Luke. Details of the last leg of his trip are below.

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