Snowy - 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

	30 Nov 2011-5 Jan 2012: Three road trips! Snowy explored to the south on 1 Dec, then made a big swing east in the middle of the month, and then went southwest at the very end of the month. We can expect more wandering, especially as the llanos habitat dries out as the dry season progresses. The distance between the farthest points on this map is 445 miles (716 km). Skip ahead to late 2012.
	Jan 2012: At the beginning of the month, Snowy moved north about 50 miles. Except for a brief sortie on the 9th and 10th, he didn't move much.
	1-29 Feb 2012: Snowy settled down and didn't move much in February.
	Feb 2012: These are some of the locations for Snowy. He's found a small river that seems to be providing good fishing. This is the good news.
	Feb 2012: Turns out what I thought was bad news is, isn't bad news after all. All those strange rectangular ponds looked like fish ponds to me, and that, of course made me very nervous.      So, it turns out that these ponds are called "prestamos," which in Spanish (and Portuguese) means "borrows." The road construction crews took dirt from along the road to get the roads high enough to stay dry in the rainy season when much of these llanos flood. Most of them probably don't have any sizable fish in them, but some, like the ones where Snowy spent some time on this image, are connected to streams or canals, so I suspect there's some tasty Osprey food in some of them.      Thanks to our Venezuelan colleague Daniella Deardem for the info (and the picture below). My blood pressure just went down a few points.      (Scroll down to see a photo of this habitat.)
	Here's the Venezuelan llanos and part of one of the "prestamos" ponds that had me fretting about fish farm ponds.
	March 2012: Snowy mostly stayed home, but did make a few one-hour forays south to the "prestamos" along the road south out of La Guarandinga.
	April 2012: Snowy mostly stayed near her current winter HQ near La Guarandinga, but he did make a 150 mi (240 km) roadtrip across the llanos to the south.
	May 2012: No road trips this month.
	May 2012: Most of the month was spent along the small river flowing just north of the thriving metropolis of La Guarandinga.
	June 2012: More of the same.
	July 2012: A few more forays east and west, but he's still in a pretty restricted area, which is good.      In July, he covered about 36 square miles (58 sq. km). If we look at the core area, it was only 18 square miles (30 sq. km). While this is encouraging (because the less these birds travel, the lower their chance of running into danger), it's still a lot more than some of our old adults, some of which use just a couple of square miles for their whole five months in South America.
	Here's a close-up of one spot that apparently is pretty fishy. It looks like a swampy area. Also visible here are the "borrows" - rectangular ponds created when the road was constructed.
	August 2012: Pretty much a copy of the July map, which is what we expect at this point.
	August 2012: Sometimes the tracks connecting hourly locations tell a more informative story than just the hourly fixes. We can see here that Snowy has three bases of operation, with the major one being the one up in the north.
	September 2012: Same old, same old. Makes for boring maps, but boring also means safe. He hasn't run into any problems here for most of a year, so it looks like a good spot.      With a bit of luck, we'll see 7 more maps just like this before heads north in April or May of 2013.
	October 2012: Same
	November 2012: Seems like he's spending a bit more time closer to the road.
	December 2012: Snowy is definitely hunting more along the road, probably taking advantage of some of the "borrow ponds" as the surrounding llanos dries up.
	1 Jan-10 March 2012: Two and a half more months with very little foraging out away from the road.      He should head north in the next month or two.