Settled in

Tilton certainly seems to like Cape May, NJ. He's been there for just over three weeks. Looks like he's doing all his fishing on the Delaware Bay side of the Cape.

 

Sadly, this turned out to be Tilton's final resting place. His transmitter stopped moving out in the marsh close to the 23 Aug location. We looked for it but couldn't find it. Months later, we briefly got a few signals from the transmitter, but not enough to go looking for it.

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Tilton...

... is a young male tagged on 12 August in Tilton, NH, at the nest where we tagged Donovan, Tilton's father, in 2013. In 2012 we tagged Tilton's siblings Jill and Chip at this nest.

We were hoping to trap Donovan and get his transmitter back, but he wasn't having anything to do with the nest after he saw us around it again. You know the old saying, "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me," Donovan lives by that and will keep the transmitter for at least another year.

Tilton has a distinctive plumage. His head is quite dark and he has quite a dark chest band for a male.

He's a bit of a pipsqueak. He weighs only 1.06 kg (about 1.3 lbs), but didn't feel thin.

My colleague, Iain MacLeod, is pictured here holding our bird. Iain is a life-long student of Ospreys who began his work with the species in Scotland and then migrated across 'the pond' to New Hampshire, where he now runs the Squam Lakes Natural Science Center in New Hampshire's Lake District.

19-31 Aug 2014

Tilton started south on the 19th and spent the night on the CT/MA border at Colebrook River Lake. The next day he spent a few hours fishing at Highland and Burr lakes in central CT. The next night was spent at Croton Falls Reservoir in Putnam County, NY and the following day he fished along the east bank of the Hudson River, spending the night in Ossining. On the 22nd, he was in Cape May, NJ, where he's been ever since. It's not unusual for young birds to have some false starts to their migrations. In fact, sometimes it's hard to tell exactly when a bird really started migrating or was just "exploring" the countryside around their nests.

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