2018 All Year

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2018 - The Year in Review

12 Jan 2018

It's been a long time since I've posted an update! Blame it on the shoulder replacement surgery or low spirits after losing so many birds this fall. We're down to our last two birds--Borealis and Holly. Borealis is doing fine in southwestern Florida, while Holly is, presumably, OK somewhere in far eastern Brazil.

After her extended stay in New Haven, Borealis finally got to Florida in mid-November. She settled down between Fort Myers and Captiva Island for almost a month. It certainly looked like that would be where she spent her gap year/18 months. It looked like a perfect spot. Then she decided to make a move and flew down to the southern tip of Florida on the 13th and 14th of December. This looked like she was rebooting her migration, with a directed move to the south. That may have been the case, but she seemed unwilling to cross the water to the Keys and instead turned east and then retreated to the north. She passed through an area where he neighbor from St. John's Newfoundland, Shana, spent some time earlier in the fall, and is now settled down northeast of Fr. Myers.

We haven't heard from Holly in a long time, but I'm not too worried. She's a cell-tower bird and has probably wandered out of range of a tower. She did this last winter, going dark early winter and then showing up later in the year. It probably has something to do with water levels in the reservoir she frequents, or down river where she spent the early part of last year.

26 March

Holy reappearing Osprey, Batman! Hours after I revised the website to say that Holly was probaby dead, she showed up in Jamaica. We hadn't heard from her since late November, when she checked in at her wintering site in eastern Brazil.

2 April

Holly is all business. She left her wintering waters in far eastern Brazil in the state of Rio Grande do Norte. We had last heard from her in late November, after losing touch with her in the Florida Keys. She has somehow mastered the art of dodging cell towers all the was across Hispaniola and northern South America. Last year she did pretty much the same thing, but when she got to her reservoir on the Rio Piranhas, we had signals from her off and on throughout the winter. This year, after a few downloads, we heard nothing from her all winter and had given up on her. Then, we got a signal from her in Jamaica on the 26th of March. After a couple more days of radio silence (we can't get data from the cell tower companies in Cuba), she came back on the air when she got to the Florida Keys. As she worked her way north through Florida, we back-filled her data so we have her whole trip from Rio Grande do Norte to Florida. She left on the 13th of March (2 days ahead of last year) and by the 2nd of April she was into Georgia, having flown over 4,800 miles in 21 days. On 31 March she spent the night only 8 miles from where Borealis, our Newfoundlander teenager, is doing her "gap year" in south-central Florida (or is it central-south Florida?) 25 miles north of Ft. Myers.

5 May

Holly arrived near her nest on 5 April, after a 24-day marathon migration of 5,600 miles! Much to my surprise, she did not return to her nest from last year. She's spent a lot of time on the Chesapeake, but also has commuted to a spot about 45 miles (72 km) west of the Bay. This is where she spent a lot of time last summer after he mate died. This is behavior we've seen in some Martha's Vineyard adults, who, after their nests failed, commuted back and forth between their nests and favorite freshwater fishing holes in Connecticut.

14 Aug

We thought Borealis, a fledgling tagged in 2017 and our last young surviving from Newfoundland, would be safe. She was spending her "gap year" in southwestern Florida, about 80 km southeast of Sarasota, far from any obvious danger. So we were both surprised and very sad to lose her signal on 14 August.

This map shows her locations for the last two weeks her transmitter was sending us data. The good news is that we lost the signal from one hour to the next, so her fate is uncertain. With some of our birds we see an accumulation of points in one spot for several days. We know these birds are dead. Birds like Borealis, where the signal ends abruptly, could still be alive. Possible explanations include a sudden malfunction of the transmitter, or a collision that both killed the bird and destroyed the transmitter.

23 Aug

After a summer wandering around the Annapolis area, Holly headed south on 23 Aug.

27 Aug

Holly made a quick trip down to the Florida Keys. She left Florida behind and headed towards Cuba on the 27th. At this point, we lost track of her. She has a cell-tower transmitter, so we get no signals from Cuba. Sometimes--more often than not--our cell-tower birds will check in when they hit Haiti or the Dominican Republic or when they pass through South America. Holly has proven remarkably sneaky, dodging cell towers across Hispaniola and much of northern South America as she heads to her wintering waters in far eastern Brazil. On her last two migrations we didn't hear from her until she got to her winter range in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Norte.

By the end of the year, we had no signal from her, so I was not expecting to hear from her again.

So we finished the year with no birds on the air and just a slim hope that Holly would show up on her way north.

As it turned out, Holly was fine, spending her winter in a new location.