Buck
'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 -- North Fork Bob -- Rammie -- Snowy -- Sr. Bones
Osprey main page -- Migration page -- Migration09 -- Migration10 -- Migration 11 -- Migration 12 -- Migration 13 -- Home Page

	Travels so far: 5 Aug-31 Dec 09. After a month on the Cumberland River in Tennessee, Buck's migration switch turned on on the 13th of September. He followed a very conventional route and has now settled down on a big lagoon on the western shore of the Gulf of Venezuela.      He explored up the Guajira Peninsula, almost reaching Jaws' original hideout at Bahia Hondita, but then retreated back to Jaws' second wintering area.      After 3 weeks in some great looking lagoons, he has made two roadtrips, but couldn't find any greener grass (or better fishing), so he's back at the shores of the Gulf of Venezuela as of 2 Dec.      Now at the end of the year, he's off on another trip south. Scroll down for detailed maps. Migration begins. 5 Oct. Skip to maps new since the last update (14 Dec).
	26-30 Jun 09. These are the first locations for Buck after we tagged him on the 26th. He had probably only fledged a day or so before we caught him. He looked pretty clumsy landing and perching around the nest.
	1-8 Jul 09. Buck is exploring a bit more, mostly moving up the Great Falls Reservoir. He's still spending time on the nest, but lots of his locations are in the trees across the reservoir from his nest pole. This shift of family action is typical of the behavior that Bill Price has seen in this pair and their offspring over the years.
	Three years ago, two Bald Eagles hatched unexpectedly in the Carolina Raptor Center's Eagle aviary. The aviary holds about 9 unreleasable Bald Eagles, a couple of which lay eggs each spring. The eggs had never been fertile until that year, so the staff was totally surprised when they went in to feed the eagles and saw two eaglets! We put transmitters on both birds prior to their release. I was checking on their whereabouts a couple of days ago and discovered that one of them is spending the summer just 30 miles sw of our Great Falls Osprey nest. It would be sort of fun if Buck wandered down to the Monticello Reservoir so I'd have two tagged birds of two different species at the same reservoir.
	8-17 Jul 09. Buck is expanding his horizon. He has made his first trip up to Fishing Creek Lake, where Duke spent most of his pre-migration time last year.
	10-23 Jul 09. Buck is really exploring now. He's been down below the Wateree Lake dam on the Catawba, and all the way up past the Landsford Canal to the southern edge of Rock Hill.  It's 35 mi. (57 km from his northernmost point on this map to the southernmost.
	24-31 Jul 09. Buck has settled down a bit and is sticking close to home.
	1-6 Aug 09. Buck is on the move! This is a lot earlier than his presumably full brother, Duke, who stayed up in Fishing Creek Lake until he started migration on the 1st of September last year.      Buck followed the Catawba River north towards Charlotte (he was about 15 miles from my house) and made it to Rock Hill, SC on 3 Aug. He returned to the nest area on the 4th, and then headed south on the 5th. He spent the night of the 5th on Lake Marion's north shore then headed due west towards Georgia.      While his first move looks like migration, I suspect he's still in the dispersal period. He'll wander around a bit, maybe even head back to the nest, and probably only begin true, directed migration later in the month or sometime in September.      He made this move at the same time Hix, our Westport, MA, youngster headed due north to Maine.
	2-9 Aug 09. Buck is moving, but not migrating. He put on the reverse thrusters and flew north into North Carolina. On the 8th he roosted in Yancy Co, NC, about 25 mi. north of Asheville. on the 9th he pushed into Tennessee-a new state for our tagged Ospreys.
	9-25 Aug 09. Buck crossed four states (and the Appalachians) in this period. He settled down along the Cumberland River in Tennessee on the 14th and is still there (as of 29 August).
	Travels so far. 4-25 Aug 09.  His first move south looked like migration, but that would have been awfully early. More typical for  young Ospreys is an apparently random trek across the countryside. Hard to imagine why young males would do this, given their very strong propensity to eventually nest very near their natal territory, but Buck is definitely a male, and he is definitely racking up the frequent flier miles. The locations where he pitched his tent each night are indicated on this map.
	16-25 Aug 09. Buck has settled down on a stretch of the Cumberland River, above Cordell Hull Lake in Jackson Co., Tennessee.
	25 Aug-13 Sep 09. After a month on the Cumberland River, Buck began his migration on the 13th.
	13-17 Sep 09. Buck started off on the 13th, heading due south.
	25 Aug 09. Buck is following the Osprey migration manual very closely.      As of the 26th, when he roosted a bit west of Guantanamo Bay, he had flown 1,432  miles (2,305 km) in 12 days.
	26 Sep-2 Oct 09. Buck cruised through Hispaniola with a couple of days rest in Santo Domingo.
	29 Sep-1 Oct 09. Buck made us pretty nervous when he stopped in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Domincan Republic. Luke tried wintering here, working up and down the same river. Luke disappeared, probably the victim of a gunshot a few months after settling down in this area.      We were thus much relieved to see Buck move on after only two days here.
	25 Aug 09. Buck crossed 481 miles (774 km) of the Caribbean in 25 hours. He left Hispaniola at 12:00 on the 3rd and landed on the Colombia's Guajira Peninsula at 13:00.      He averaged only 19 mph (31 kph) on the crossing, which is slow and somewhat surprising, as he appears to have been going with the tradewinds at his back.
	25 Aug 09. Buck missed the absolute northernmost point of land in South America here on the surprisingly arid Guajira Peninsula by 20 miles. He also just missed Bahia Hondita, where Jaws spent his first year and a half in S.A.      He roosted and spent a few hours on the shore of the Gulf of Venezuela.      On the 6th he moved down to a big lagoon, where it looks like the migration switch is now in the "off" position.      Since left Tennessee and began migration in earnest, he has flown 2,562 miles (4,123 km) in 20 days (not counting a couple of days on hold in eastern Hispaniola), averaging 128 miles (206 km)/day.
	6-17 Oct 09. Buck has settled into what looks like primo Osprey real estate. In fact, Jaws spent his third winter at this very lagoon area.
	17 Oct 09. A closer view of Osprey paradise.
	5 Oct-1 Nov 09. After over 3 weeks in the lagoons at the western edge of the Gulf of Venezuela, Buck headed southeast on the 1st of November.      When I saw this movement, I made a bet with myself that he would loop around and return to the lagoons up north. This is a pattern that we have seen repeatedly from the youngsters after the settle down for a while. It may be a few weeks or even a month, but they often get an urge to explore. These "roadtrips" will often lead them hundreds of miles out into unknown territory. Typically, they loop around and return to the spot where they had settled down. These exploratory loops will often be the first true navigation that we see in a bird. It is navigation because the birds are returning to a known location from a novel direction. This is different from what they do on their first migration south, when they have no actual destination "in mind," but rather just a general direction and something that triggers them to stop migrating at some point.
	19 Nov 09. Buck did circle around and come back to his lagoons on the shores of the Gulf of Venezuela.
	13-20 Nov 09. He's off again. This time he's on a different route from the 1 Nov junket.      Where to next? Will he come back here? Stay tuned.
	19 Nov-2 Dec 09. Buck is doing what many of our other tagged juveniles have done--exploring the countryside, apparently fishing (sorry) for a better location to settle down for the winter.      One of the interesting aspects of these trips is that we see these birds using true navigation, some for the first time in their lives. They head out in one direction and return to a known location from a novel direction. How birds do this is one of the great mysteries challenging ornithologists today.      Buck's trip covered 671 mi. (1080 km).
	2-14 Dec 09. Buck has settled down back at his lagoon complex on the southwestern shore of the Gulf of Venezuela. Jaws spent his second migration winter here back in '06-'07.
	2-20 Dec 09. Buck is off again, apparently circumnavigating Lake Maracaibo. He made this loop back in early November, but that time he went clockwise around the lake.
	20 Dec 09-04 Jan 2010. Buck settled down for a couple of weeks. Unfortunately, it was cloudy when these satellite photos were taken, so we can't get great detail on the area he's hunting, but it appears to be very similar to the lagoons he was fishing up north. Follow Buck's 2010 maps

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