Ozzie
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Ozzie
'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: 19 Sep-19 Nov 09. Ozzie pretty much paralleled his neighbor Hudson down the east coast to Cuba, where he has slowed down a bit. Maybe the weather, or maybe this is where he spends the winters. We never know with adults the first time we follow their migration.
     Ozzie seems to have settled down. He's at a big lagoon in Cienfuegos (100 Fires) on Cuba's south coast. He's been there for 9 days now, and this may be his wintering area.

Scroll down for detailed maps.

Skip to the onset of migration.

Skip to maps new since the last update (starting 20 Nov).
14-20 May 09. Ozzie has spent most of his hunting time along the Westport River, but he has also been over to the Sakonnet River. Both A.C. Bent, in his classic Life Histories of North American Birds, and Forbush, in Birds of Massachusetts, wrote of Ospreys nesting along the MA/RI border and flying west to This area to hunt, just as Ozzie has been doing.
18 May- 3 June 09. Ozzie continues to focus his hunting north and west of his nest. His heading on the westernmost point on this map was pretty much due west, so he almost surely made it to Narragansett Bay. That point is 11.4 mi (18.4 km) from his nest.
4-16 Jun 09. Like Hudson, Ozzie is no longer fishing the east branch of the Westport River and is concentrating his fishing west of his nest. Spawning herring in the Westport are being replaced on the menu by menhaden (also known as pogy or mossbunker). Ozzie's longest expedition on this map was 13.4 mi (21.5 km).
16-30 Jun 09.  Ozzie is doing most of his fishing in South Watuppa and Stafford Ponds, northwest of his nest, with only two trips over to Narragansett Bay.
1-8 Jul 09. Here's the first week of July, with the other two male's data displayed. Most of Ozzie's fishing time was spent up at South Watuppa Pond, but he did make a few forays to the Sakonnet River area, where he may have bumped into Hudson. I wonder if they compare notes about life with a transmitter on their backs?
8-17 Jul 09. Here's the map for the middle 2 weeks of July. Ozzie is really covering the waterfront. He seems to have established a base camp on Conanicut Island (Jamestown) RI, where I'll be tagging a young bird at the end of the month, as well as one on Prudence Island in Narragansett Bay.
     He is clearly still feeding young, as evidenced by the Osprey highways leading from Conanicut and Prudence Islands back to his nest.
12-23 Jul 09. Ozzie is definitely getting the most frequent flier miles in this group, in stark contrast to Hudson and Rafael, whose transmitter stopped transmitting, rather mysteriously, on the 7th of July.
1-23 Jul 09.
     (If you looked at Hudson's maps first, you've already read this:)  Data from all three birds are included in this map. Rafael's data are only for the first week of July--his transmitter stopped transmitting on the 7th--while the data for Ozzie and Hudson are from the middle two weeks of the month.
     The contrast between the three birds we tagged is a really neat bit of science, making the case for large sample sizes. While three isn't really a large sample, and no case really needs to be made for large samples, the three birds we tagged make it clear that tagging only one bird would have given us a very incomplete picture of Osprey foraging in this colony.
     There is a tendency to forget that animals are individuals. We read that the average territory size for species X is 10 hectares and think that all birds of that species use 10 ha territories, when in fact, of course, there are some birds that have 15 ha and some have 5 ha territories.
     Animals are individuals with unique combinations of genes, as Ozzie, Hudson, and Rafael so dramatically illustrate. Natural selection operates on individuals, not on a hypothetical average organism. It's exactly this sort of variation that enables natural selection to work.
24-31 Jul 09.
     I left Ozzie's paths off this map for the sake of clarity, but he's still hauling fish back to the nest. He now isn't very interested in Prudence Island, but really is finding the fishing good at South Watuppa.
27 Jul - 15 Aug 09.
     South Watuppa is still the place to fish, but Ozzie's still working to the west, back to Prudence Island.
27 Jul - 15 Aug 09.
     After Ozzie brings home the bacon (fish), he likes to rest on the larger island downstream a bit. He doesn't have much time to rest, though, as he's going a long way to catch fish for his youngsters.
15-25 Aug 09.
     Same old same old. Ozzie is still covering a pretty large area and focusing his attention on the nest, where one or both of his offspring are probably still on the dole.
25 Aug -10 Sep 09.
     Ozzie's found some good fishing at Devol pond, and was working both the east and west branches of the Westport River. He also was doing some hunting along the east shore of the Sakonnet River, where Hudson was also feeding at the time.
     Informed sources suggest that they were probably after menhaden, or porgy, as they're known in those waters.
10-19 Sep 09.
     Ozzie fueled up at Devol Pond and along the East Branch for the week before heading off to points south.
     Interestingly, he was going back to the nest throughout this pre-migration period. We don't know if he still had young around the nest or not.
     As best we can tell from the data, he started his migration from the immediate area of his nest.
19-20 Sep 09.
     Ozzie took off on the 19th with a modest first step for his migration. He roosted at Lake Konomoc. Coincidentally, this is where we lost Bunga, one of the first young tagged in our study, back in '04.
     On the 20th, he moved west into New Jersey. He arrived in a big marshy area northeast of Newark around 15:00 and apparently did some fishing. He then turned north and flew 24 mi (38 km) north to Wanaque Reservoir.
     I suspect this may be a spot Ozzie knows about from a previous trip north or south.
20 Sep 09.
     Ozzie detoured up to this reservoir for the night. He took off around 08:00 on the 21st.
21-25 Sep 09.
     Ozzie left Wanaque Reservoir and followed the inland route south, leaving Delaware and Chesapeake Bays to port.
     He made it to North Carolina on the 24th, roosting downstream of Falls Lake, just north of Raleigh. On the 25th he spent the night in Lumberton, NC.

743 miles (1,196 km) on the Ospreyometer so far.
25 Sep-3 Oct 09.
     Pretty standard stuff here. He only moved 18 miles (29 km) on the 26th-likely waiting for the weather to change. He spent 4 hours around a small farm pond and then moved into the nearby forest for the evening.
     After that refueling stop, he got down to Miami 5 days later, on Oct 1.
     He then spent a couple of days in the Everglades and Florida Keys.
   
3-13 Oct 09.
     After a couple of days around Miami and the Keys, Ozzie crossed the Florida Straight to Cuba, landing and setting camp near Matanzas on the 4th.
     The next morning he was on the wing, heading southeast. About 6 hours later, he arrived at a big lagoon in Cienfuegos. This looks like it might be his wintering area.

     He has flown 1,795 miles (2889 km) in 15 days, for an average of 120 miles (193 km)/day, which is pretty average for adult Ospreys migrating south.

 More detailed views of the Cienfuegos area below.
3-13 Oct 09.
     This looks like really prime real estate for an overwintering Osprey.
3-13 Oct 09.
     Here's a close up of the area just north of the lagoon that Ozzie particularly favors. My guess is that this is a big mangrove swamp, with shallow, open water nearby. Perfect.
13 Oct-19 Nov 09.
     I expect this will be what we see from Ozzie until he heads north in late Feb or early Mar.
20-30 Nov 09.
     This map's here just to round out the month in anticipation of monthly maps from here until he begins his northward migration in February or March.
1-31 Dec 09.
     Ozzie seems to favor 3 locations for his fishing.
1-31 Jan 10.
     Ozzie should be heading north sometime in February. He has a headstart on Hudson, so maybe he'll start a little later.
     The few points over to the west on this map show that Ozzie has discovered a fish farm. This is not good.
1-28 JFeb 10.
     Ozzie is really working this fish farm hard. This is definitely not a good thing.
1-28 Feb 10.
     Here's a close up of the fish ponds.
     This is so similar to the place where Conanicus was shot a few years back that I thought it was the same place. It's not.
1-16 Mar '10.
     At this point, it seems Ozzie was getting all his fish at the fish farm, and only returning to Cienfuegos to sleep.
     Sadly, someone at the fish farm got tired of sharing fish with Ozzie. He did not last the month. The last signals we got were around Mar 25.

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