MIGRATION - 2005
INTRODUCTION
With the loss of three of our tagged birds in 2004 (Migration -2004), and Jaws' spending his second year of life down in Colombia, we had only one bird migrating north this spring. Click here to follow Bluebeard, the adult male at the Outermost Inn nest in Aquinnah, on his northward migration.
Two new birds were tagged at the end of July - one on Martha's Vineyard, the other in Rhode Island (see details below)
WHO'S WHO? See
the bios of our two fledglings tagged in 2005.
Jaws and Bluebeard - the "Class of
'04"
MAPS-Migration begins:
Homer
The Martha's Vineyard youngster made his first move on 19 August.
Conanicus
The Rhode Island youngster has begun to explore.
Bluebeard
Our adult male from Martha's Vineyard is still hanging around his nest.
Migration
continues:
Homer's second attempt
After a month on the Shenandoah River...
Florida and points
south:
Conanicus
Bluebeard
Homer's Odyssey in South America
Homer:
December and January
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"Homer" is a young male, trapped this year on his nest on July 28th. He is one of three fledglings raised by the Vineyard's Osprey Mom-of-the-Year. The female here suffered through the awful spring weather on a pole that could not be more exposed to the elements, hatched at least three young, and reared them all to fledging with little support from her male, whose meager offerings of small perch paled incomparison to the 24" bluefish that the female lugged in to the nest. This was one of only three nests on the Vineyard that fledged three young. |
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Homer's nest is on the Long Point Wildlife Refuge, owned and maintained by the Trustees of Reservations. |
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| "Conanicus" is
another young male, tagged on his nest in Rhode Island. The nest is in a
lovely marsh on Conanicut Island in Narragansett Bay. (Conanicut is better
known, albeit inaccurately, as Jamestown, the one town on the island.) Our
bird is named for Conanicus, the chief of the Narraganset tribe that lived
on the island.
We decided to go "off Island" and tag a non-Vineyard bird partly in thanks for help in recovering a transmitter from Bunga, a 2004 Vineyard young that died in nearby New London last fall, but more importantly to support the educational efforts of the Conanicut Island Raptor Project. |
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BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND FROM 2004:
Bluebeard" is an adult male tagged at the Outermost Inn near the cliffs of Aquinnah on Martha's Vineyard. After wintering for five months in southern Colombia, he started north on St. Patrick's Day, 2005. (See Maps from Florida and points north or start of the spring 2005 migration.) He arrived back on the breeding grounds very late this spring, probably because he left the Vineyard so late last fall after spending an inordinate amount of time feeding a young apparently born in the shallow end of the gene pool. This year his mate laid eggs, but they did not hatch. A very nasty spring led to widespread nest failures all over Martha's Vineyard this year.
"Jaws," a young bird tagged shortly after he left his nest last year, is still in Colombia on the Guajira Peninsula, catching fish amidst the flamingos in the expansive Bahia Hondita (see details). He will remain in South America for another year. Ospreys are the only raptor with this extended first stay on the wintering grounds. In other raptor species, the young return to the breeding grounds the next spring, even though they rarely breed until they are two or more years old.
Osprey
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