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15-17 Sep 09.
Katy's time with us was way too short. She started off
on her migration on the 15th and only made it to southern Delaware
before something happened to her.
We'll probably not know what happened, but this is
another situation where, as Louis told his staff--round up the usual
suspects! In our case, this would be a Great-horned Owl.
When an apparently healthy bird is moving along on its
migration, spends a night in a bit of forest, and never comes out the
other end, Great-horned Owls are very likely candidates for cause of
death. |
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1-8 Aug 09.
Katy hadn't flown until I poked my head over the edge
of her nest on July 30th. She took her first reluctant flight rather
than let me grab her when I got to nest level. After a couple of
take-offs and landings, I was able to corral her and outfit her with a
transmitter.
She spent another week in the nest and finally started
exploring on the 6th. (Details below).
I've included the data points from our Westport River
male, Ozzie, who spends a lot of time over Narragansett Bay and may run
into Katy as she wanders farther from the nest. |
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1-8 Aug 09. Katy's first locations off the nest.
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7-19 Aug 09.
Katy was sticking close to home over these two weeks. |
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19-28 Aug 09.
Katy is stretching her wings a bit. She apparently
didn't find enough fish up at the little reservoir north of her nest to
merit another trip, but really likes the Pettasquamscutt River (does
anyplace on the planet have better place names than New England?) across
Narragansett Bay. |
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25 Aug-7 Sep 09.
The fishing must be good on the Pettaquamscutt.
Katy's still basing her operations out of the nest area. The very last
signal on the 7th was from the immediate vicinity of the nest. |
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15-16 Sep 09.
Katy is the third of our seven tagged youngsters to
succumb to the urge. She took off on the 15. She roosted in along the
Connecticut coast just west of the Connecticut River. Our last signal on
the 16th was from New Jersey (just). She flew over Manhattan around
15:30. Birders in Central Park may have spotted her. |
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17 Sep 09.
Katy continued south, denying the hawk watchers at
Cape May the pleasure of her company, and settled down at the edge of a
large cypress swamp in southern Delaware.
A cypress swamp in Delaware? One never knows what
interesting tidbit one will discover watching (as it were) Ospreys
migrate! |
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17 Sep 09.
Katy's last stand. We'll never know what happened,
but a Great-horned Owl is a likely prime suspect.
We got the transmitter back and indications from the
scene of the crime suggest a Great-horned Owl was the perpetrator of the
crime. |