Caley
Maps for:
Bea --
Buck --
Claws --
Conomo -- Hix --
Hudson --
Isabel -- Katy --
L.R. -- Moffet --
Mr. Hannah --
Ozzie --
Penelope
--
Rafael
Birds
of Prey page -- Osprey
main page --
Migration09 -- Migration
page -- Home
Page
 |
Travels so far: 19 Sep-17 Nov 09. Caley jumped on the "sure I can
fly 1,200 miles non-stop" bandwagon and flew directly (more or less)
from Martha's Vineyard to the Bahamas. She spent a nerve-wracking (for us, not her) two months in the Dominican Republic, just a few miles from where Meadow was shot last year. We were nervous because we have never had an Osprey successfully overwinter in the D.R. Much to my surprise (and relief), after 2 months in the D.R. she packed her bags and crossed the Caribbean. She is now in Venezuela. Scroll down for details of her trip. Skip to maps new since the last update. |
 |
3-8 Aug 09.
Caley was tagged on the 3rd at the mouth of Caleb's
Pond on Chappaquiddick Island. "Chappy" is the unofficial Osprey
headquarters of Martha's Vineyard. 12-14 pairs typically nest each year.
The Caleb's Pond area seems to be developing into a mini-colony. Two
pairs nested this year, and two housekeeping pairs built substantial
nests but did not lay eggs. These are her hourly locations through the 8th. She and her family like to sit on sailboat masts moored near the nest. |
 |
8-25 Aug 09. Caley and Moffet (our Felix Neck Sanctuary bird) are the first two young to really start to explore. They may have bumped into a couple of times. Wonder if they compare notes on their transmitters. She likes the coves of Edgartown Great Pond. |
 |
25 Aug-7 Sep 09. Bea and Caley are vying for
the Couch-Potato-of-the-year award. The human residents of "Chappy" are
notoriously loathe to leave their small island, but I didn't know the
affliction crossed species lines. These are all the locations for over 2
weeks. Caley has ventured afield some, but Bea really never has. It's quite unusual to have these two birds staying so close to their nests when one of their "classmates" is already in the Bahamas, Hix is in Maine, and Buck is hundreds of miles and 5 state lines from his nest. Every year brings its surprise. |
 |
19-21 Sep 09. Caley crossed
our corner of the Atlantic in about 45 hours. There seem to have been a couple of course corrections in her path. Over the night of the 19th and early morning hours of the 20th she was heading southwest, presumably riding a northeast wind. When we pick up her track again on the morning of the 20th, she's heading pretty much due south. Until we track down some archival meteorological data, we can only speculate that she's been heading due south the whole time and at this point the northeast winds have abated, so she's not drifting with the wind. Alternatively, she may have made a course correction sometime during the evening, or perhaps at dawn when the sun came up. (Birds do reset their internal compasses by sunrise and sunset positions). This is a good point to re-emphasize that the straight line from the last point on the 19th to the 1st on the 20th does not mean that that was exactly the track she took. She made another course correction at 17:00 on the 20th. Presumably at that point she could actually see the Bahamas. She covered 1290 miles (2076 km) in 45 hours, averaging 29 mph (46 kph). |
 |
21-23 Sep 09. Caley stayed over land for two days, following Little San Salvador and Long Islands, which conveniently point in the direction she wants to go. |
 |
23-26 Sep 09. Caley took a bee line (couldn't
resist) from Long Island to eastern Cuba, where she roosted close to
shore. She made a modest move east on the 25th and then flew over to Haiti on the 26th. |
 |
25 Sep-9 Oct 09. Caley kept right on moving from
Cuba across Hispaniola. We had hoped she would continue on to South America, but she decided this was far enough and settled down. So far, we have lost all four of the juvenile Ospreys that tried to overwinter in the D.R. We know three were shot and we suspect the 4th was as well. |
 |
29 Sep-10 Oct 09. Caley is spending most of her time
fishing two rivers in the eastern Dominican Republic. She is fishing
mostly along a small river just a few miles west of and nerve-wrackingly
close to the farm where Meadow was shot early in 2009. After what appeared to be the end of her migration, she had covered 2,083 miles (3,352 km) in 10 days for an average of 208 miles/day (335 km/day). |
 |
10-18 Oct 09. Caley is commuting between two rivers, keeping us a little bit happy by not wandering over towards Higuey. |
 |
18-25 Oct 09. Caley made one foray towards
Higuey, but continued to hang around the two rivers that she has been
fishing pretty much since her arrival on 29 Sep. I've put Meadow's locations for her last 11 days on the map for comparison. Both birds used the river close to Higuey. In this landscape, it's pretty much rivers or farm ponds, as there are no large inland reservoirs like those that dot the northern Venezuelan landscape (see Claw's maps for '08). |
 |
25 Oct-8 Nov 09. Caley seems to have made a
choice on her favorite river. Looks like she's settled down. But, if
we've learned anything over the years, it's that looks can be deceiving.
Scroll on! |
 |
25 Oct 09. Caley flew due south on the 9th,
perhaps an aborted restart to her migration, but returned to her base of
operations on her favorite river. On the 10th, she was off on the next leg of her migration just before 09:00. She left the D.R. behind (hooray!) around 13:15 and headed southeast. |
 |
9-11 Nov 09. About 6 hours into her trip,
Caley apparently caught up with a boat heading in her direction and
hitched a ride. She's not a fast Osprey, averaging about 20 mph in open
flight. The distance between the last two fixes for the day were only 10
miles apart. This is really too slow for an Osprey on the wing. This is another example of the care we need to take in interpreting the lines between points separated by more than an hour. We don't know exactly where Caley flew overnight from the last fix on the 10th to the first location on the morning of the 11th. Certainly, she didn't make a sharp right at 08:00, so she must have been coming in from a bit further north. |
 |
10-13 Nov 09. More evidence that Caley was
hitchhiking at some point on the 10th. The distance between her last fix
on the 10th and the first on the 11th (12 hours apart) was only 112 mi.
(182 km) for an average speed of 10 mph (16 kph). Over the next two
12-hour segments (when she was certainly flying) she covered 195 mi.
(315 km) and 191 mi. (302 km) averaging a pretty slow 15 mph (25 kph),
but 50% faster than the overnight segment on the 10th. I don't think an
Osprey could fly 10 mph and stay in the air. An alternative explanation would be that she was bucking a very strong headwind, but that's pretty unlikely in this area where the tradewinds are so reliably out of the northeast. The whole crossing was at least 600 mi. (960 km). She made landfall in Venezuela in the mid morning of the 12th, about 43 hours leaving the D.R. Despite all that time in the air, she didn't stop to rest more than a few hours. She pushed right on moving south about 30 mi. (52 km) into Venezuela's coastal mountains. |
 |
12-17 Nov 09. Caley hunkered down for a couple of nights after her crossing of the Caribbean. On the 14th she moved east and found another mountain river valley to hunt for a few days. |
 |
14-17 Nov 09. Caley has found another river to
her liking. I don't think this is the end of her travels. Homer, back in '06 didn't find a spot he liked until January. Migration stats: 57 days since leaving home. 14 days actually migrating. 2787 miles total this migration (so far)= 4485 km. On migration days only, she averaged 199 miles/day=320 k/day. Stay tuned! |
Birds of Prey page -- Osprey main page -- Migration page -- Home Page