All 7 birds are heading north!
Rob Bierregaard
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Exciting (and busy times) at Map Central!
All 7 of our tagged Ospreys are now heading home. At least 3 birds are in the States. The uncertainty (it might be 4) is due to one of our cell-tower birds (Bridger), who rather miraculously found (for the 3rd time) a cell tower in the middle of NOWHERE--the rainforest along the Brazil-Colombia border. When he checked in from that most remote outpost, he dumped the missing data for where he spent the winter--which was way down south in Brazil--the farthest south any of our birds have gone. Since his last report home (15 March) we haven't heard from him again. A bit worrisome, because he should be in the states by now, so we should be getting some data. But we're so new at this (this is only the 19th cell-tower transmitter that our manufacturer, Microwave Telemetry, produced) that we don't know to what extent no news is bad news.
His neighbor on the Westport River (MA), Rammie, also chimed in and is leading the pack heading north--he's in Virginia now. He's a cell-tower finding fiend, so we're getting daily updates, and now have all his data from when we last heard from him (back in September!) heading south through Virginia.
North Fork Bob and Sr. Bones, veterans on their 3rd satellite monitored trips north, were both in the Everglades on the 26th and 27th. They're both a week to 2 days ahead of last year's travel.
Very surprisingly, our almost 2-yr old Snowy (Martha's Vineyard juvenile from 2011) started moving on the 23rd (I think). We've never had a juvie start this early. He even started before Belle, who started her 2nd trip north just a couple of days ago. Also early for a 2nd trip north.
I very hastily threw a map together for the "Where's Waldo" map on the Migration 2013 page (http://www.bioweb.uncc.edu/bierregaard/migration13.htm) before dashing to the airport for an unexpected trip. I just read the narrative that accompanies the map--very sloppy, but you'll get the idea. When I get back next week, the birds will have moved a lot and I'll update all the individual maps.