Chip - 2012
'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

	10 Oct 2012 - This is the most bizarre map I've ever posted. I never imagined I would have to label the Azores--much less Portugal-- in a map for one of our migrating Ospreys!      He left Rhode Island on the 7th, on a fine morning. Unfortunately, he flew into a big front that was moving up the coast.      As of the 10th, he had been out over the Atlantic for 4 days. for about 36 hours in the middle of that period, he was on a ship--heading in very much the wrong direction.      We did not expect to get any more signals from him, so we were absolutely amazed when we got GPS locations downloaded on the 14th. As usual, scroll down for the details.
	2 August 2012 - This is Chip's nest. Tim Bergquist, from Chippers Inc. very skillfully put me up in the nest to set our trap and extract the birds when they were caught. (Thanks to Chippers for providing the bucket truck!)      As so often happens, we caught the adult female first. We just banded her and let her go. We then waited a couple of hours before we caught a young female (Jill) and then another 4 hours before we caught Chip.
	2-4 Aug 2012 - Chip and Jill are staying pretty close to the nest.
	2-4 Aug 2012 - Chip is exploring quite a bit. This is a lot different from the youngster (Saco) we tagged last year. Saco never went more than 600 yards from her nest until the day before she migrated. The loop he made on 16 Aug got him to a point on the Merrimack River 12 miles (19 km) south of his nest.
	22 Aug 2012 - Whoa! It appears Chip has started his migration. If he keeps going south, rather than looping around back to his natal area, this will be the second earliest migration start of any of the 44 young we have tagged. The earliest was 19 August.      I've included the movements of all our New England birds here. A few have been wandering a bit, but no one else is making a move south.
	22-24 Aug 2012 - It's official-Chip is heading south. It's likely that he will stop along the way. Many of the young we've followed will stop for extended periods--sometimes a month or more--before resuming migration.
	22-30 Aug 2012 - Chip put the brakes on migration in Rhode Island. He's on the Pettaquamscutt River, where a few of our other tagged birds have spent some quality time fishing.       No telling when he'll get going again. Juveniles are remarkably unpredictable in their migration--often stopping for a month or more in the middle of their trip south.      It looked like he started migrating again on the 25th, but if he did, something changed his mind. Maybe the weather took a turn for the worse. With the remnants of Isaac creeping up the eastern seaboard as of this writing, it's unlikely he'll move for a few days. Perhaps when the storm moves through and a nice high pressure system provides some northerly winds he'll get a move on.
	22-30 Aug 2012 - It would appear that the Pettaquamscutt is a pretty fishy spot. The ponds are apparently (see next map for details) full of bluegill, pickerel, and small-mouth bass. The area where Chip is doing most of his fishing is actually brackish.
	Here's an old postcard of the Pettaquamscutt River which is reportedly full of white perch. Details on the river (and the source of this picture): http://bit.ly/Sjn2kt. The wooden structure is unidentified--I think it is clearly a prototype of a geodesic dome. Bucky Fuller must have been fishing here and had some time on his hands. Update: Joe Scudlark gets  the antique fishing gear award for recognizing this strange structure as a giant spool used to pull in shore-based seine nets.
	1-25 Sep 2012 - After his very early start to migration, Chip seems to have forgotten what he set out to do, which was not just to migrate to Rhode Island! He's been here a little over a month now. This is not that unusual for our juvie Ospreys. We've often had them settle down for a month or more before the migration urge kicked back in. It certainly looks like Chip has found a great fishing spot on Pettaquamscutt Lake.
	Photo Challenge! - OK, Rhode Islanders, time to mount that telephoto and head over to Lake Pettaquamscutt and send me some pictures of Chip. So far this year we've had pictures of Belle taken on Martha's Vineyard and Thatch down in New Jersey. We'd love a picture of Chip. He was there on the 25th, and it looks like we're not going to have very good migration weather for a few days, so it should be easy. Go for it!     -Update: we didn't get any pictures (just one sighting), but did get reports that there are at least 6 Ospreys fishing the lake!
	7-10 Oct 2012 - After six weeks fishing the Pettaquamscutt, Chip took off on the morning of the 6th on what looked like the restart of his migration. Winds were strong out of the southwest that day, so maybe he decided it was too much effort and retreated to the Pettaquamscutt. On the 7th, the weather was pretty spectacular in the morning, so Chip took off again, this time leaving a bit after 8 AM. At 9 AM he was out over open water just east of Block Island.b
	7-8 Oct 2012 - Sometime during the day, the weather turned ugly as a big low pressure system was working its way up the coast. Chip flew into this storm sometime in the afternoon. Our last signal on the 7th had him tracking southwest-still on course and seemingly in good shape. He had flown a respectable 320 miles (522 km).      When his GPS unit turned on again at 9AM on the 8th, he was 183 mi. (294 km) southwest of where he had been the night before. Whatever course he took, it wasn't the straight line shown on the map.
	8 Oct 2012 - This one's a challenge! We have no idea how he got to where we pick him up at 9 AM. Sometime after 9 he must have landed on a ship. The 10 AM - 2 PM distances moved were too slow for him to have been on the wing.      Then at 3 PM, he seems to be back in the air heading southwest.      By 6 PM he had been out over the water for about 30 hours, and flown through some bad weather, presumably. So maybe it's not too surprising that when he saw another (?) ship he decided to rest.      That's should have been OK, except the ship was heading in the wrong direction--northeast.
	9-14 Oct 2012 - This is crazy!       Back on the 10th I wrote that I would have been very surprised to get any more signals from him, but if we did, it wouldn't be the first time he has surprised us! Consider us very surprised.      The question now is, of course, is he still alive, or are we just tracking the ship? He's been out over the Atlantic either on the wing or on board his ship for a whole week.      And what exactly is this ship doing? I've got some nautical experts on the case trying to figure out if we can identify the ship.      There is a published report of an Osprey that spent several days on a fishing boat 1,000 miles off the west coast of South America (near the Galapagos Islands). The bird would perch in the rigging of the ship and foray out to catch fish, returning to the ship to feed. Hard to imagine poor young Chip pulling that off, but who knows?      Maybe the crew can open up a few cans of tuna for him!
	7-14 Oct 2012 - Sadly, but not surprisingly, Chip didn't make it. He died sometime on the 14th after 7 days out over the Atlantic--almost certainly without eating that whole time.     So what was going on? We're confident that he was on at least 3 ships, and maybe 4.After being blown southeast on the night of the 7th, he might has spent some time on a ship on the 8th. Only problem with that is that his average altitude during that time was 185 m.      On the 9th he was absolutely on a ship. He was moving in a perfectly straight line at only about 12 mph--too slow for an Osprey in flight.      It looks like he got off the ship on the 10th.and 11th. If he was on a ship, it was one that was not following a really tight compass course.      On the 12th he was on a ship again. If we extend the bearing he was on, it matches the shipping lane that would take a ship from the St. Lawrence to southern Africa.      On the 13th he seems to have moved off one ship and landed on another, this one on a course from the Caribbean to Europe.      The last GPS signal from him was on the 14th. We did get some weak signals from his radio on the 17th, but it was right where we last heard from him on the 14th, so it appears his body was floating out in the middle of the ocean.      What an amazing journey!