|
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. |