Project OspreyTrack: Bridget Map

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February 5, 2015
We may have lost Bridget! She moved a couple miles south of her regular area on the 28th and was fishing in various ponds and ditches close to a golf course in South Vero Beach. Her last normal upload was on January 30 (when all looked normal, although one of her fishing spots was right next to the highway!). There were three “odd” points from an unexpected mini upload on 31st and then nothing since (her transmitter should have uploaded on February 3). This is very worrying as the transmitters are regular as clockwork and usually when they miss an upload, it’s bad news. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that if it was just a blip, but I’m not holding my breath. She was doing so well and seemingly in a great spot to spend the winter, but . . . we’ll see.

Donovan and Artoo are doing fine.

January 5, 2015
Happy New Year to all our OspreyTrack fans . . . and to our Ospreys, Donovan, Artoo and Bridget.
Bridget has been very predictable over the last month and has stayed in the same small area near Vero Beach. She splits her time between fishing on the tidal areas along the shore and on the ponds on several golf courses. We assume that she will stay here for the next 16 months before getting the urge to return to New Hampshire, or will she get a renewed urge to head to South America, or will she become part of the Florida breeding population, or . . . who knows? . . . stay tuned.

December 4, 2014
Bridget is dodging golf balls on the Grand Harbor Golf Club. She seems to like the water traps scattered around the course. Must be fish aplenty!

October 29, 2014
Bridget is blanketing Vero Beach. She is staying within a very small area and seems to be doing just fine. My colleague Rob Bierregaard has had one of his tagged birds stay for as long as five weeks in Florida before renewing its migration and heading for S. America, so it’s not too late for her to “get the urge.” Time will tell. She is now the only one of the 20+ Ospreys with tags being followed by Rob and me remaining in North America. All the rest are either in the Caribbean Islands or in South America already.

October 23, 2014
Bridget is looking very settled in the Vero Beach area. Maybe she will winter here. It’s almost a month since she arrived in Florida.

October 17, 2014
Bridget is still hanging in Vero Beach. Her night roost sites have been quite scattered (unlike her stopover in Milford, CT), but she certainly favors the wooded islands.

October 10, 2014
Believe it or not a New Hampshire-based photographer named Libby Corbin was visiting Vero Beach in Florida earlier this week and noticed a fishing Osprey near John’s Island. She noticed it had an antennae and snapped some pictures. When she got back to New Hampshire she shared the images with a mutual friend who shared the images with Iain MacLeod. Of course the bird in the photo is Bridget (her data points confirm that she was right in the area at the time that Libby took her photos). What are the chances?

October 3, 2014
Bridget is still exploring the coast just north of Vero Beach in Florida. She visits the Atlantic shore to fish as the tide is coming in, but mostly spends time in the waterways between the islands.

October 1, 2014
Bridget is hanging out near Vero Beach in Florida. She was working the coastal area and visiting a pond on a golf course.

September 27, 2014
Bridget crossed over to Florida and made landfall just north of West Palm Beach. She headed north (!) and followed the barrier islands up the east coast. Once she passed Vero Beach, she did double back south for one hour. We’ll see if she gets her bearings and continues south. Such a nerve-racking business watching Ospreys make their first migrations. Latest data from our other juvenile, Tilton, does not look good. He has been in Cape May for over a month and was doing just fine, but latest upload on Saturday showed that he didn’t move from the same spot for two days – never a good sign. A search party from NJ Audubon is on the case.

September 24, 2014
Bridget made it safely to the Bahamas. She left Cape Lookout in North Carolina at 10am on September 21st and arrived 26 hours later on Man-O-War Cay, Abaco, Bahamas having flow 973 kilometers. She rested on that island for a couple hours and then headed to Great Guana Cay. She roosted there for the night. On the 23rd she flew to Treasure Cay and late in the day was headed towards Grand Bahama. What a beautiful place she has found herself in (see photos). Just a little different from New Hampshire!

September 22, 2014
Bridget did indeed leave CT on the 18th and made a nice easy flight down the east coast to North Carolina. She stopped off each night near a body of water and no doubt fished before heading off each day. But . . . on Sunday afternoon she headed straight south from the Carolina coast and is now in for a long over-water journey of 700 miles to the Caribbean Islands. Ospreys often manage these journeys. She's south of the big storm and was moving along at a good clip, so fingers crossed that when we hear from her again on Wednesday, that she is safely back on dry land . . . and wondering why she didn't get the "stay over land as long as possible" memo from her parents.

September 18, 2014, 6:00pm
Looks like Bridget headed off just before 1pm today. I only got one point SW of her staging location on the Housatonic, but she was high and moving SW. A less accurate non-GPS point at 2pm had her out over the Long Island Sound. I may have to wait until Sunday before I know for sure that she departed.

September 18, 2014
Bridget is still on the Housatonic as of this morning – hanging with her new friends.

September 12, 2014
A local Osprey watcher named Sherri has been trying to photograph Bridget on the Housatonic. She sent me some shots that she took on Wednesday that shows that there are six Ospreys perched along the river there. They are perched on three different dead snags on the river bank. Her photos clear up a little mystery. Several of Bridget’s data points are “on” the bridge. At first I thought she might be perched on light towers on the bridge or even the railings along the side of the bridge. That thought made me very nervous (inexperienced Ospreys and traffic don’t mix). But . . . Sherri’s photos show that one of the snags is right under the bridge, so that is where she is perching. Although none of her photos show a bird with a transmitter clearly visible, Bridget’s data points for the two hours that Sherri was there on Wednesday, show that she was perched on all three of those trees during that time, so one of the birds that Sherri photographed has to be Bridget. I have my suspicions that Bridget is the bird perched on the taller tree in the 2nd and 3rd photos. Great work Sherri.

September 8, 2014
Bridget is still in the same spot on the Housatonic. Unlike Tilton (see his map) she has roosted each night in the same area. She has used several different trees, but all within a 500 yard stretch of shoreline on the east side of the river. The bank is steep and heavily-wooded there – probably reminds her of home along the Pemigewasset in Bridgewater.

September 2, 2014
Bridget is still in the same spot on the Housatonic. She did make one five mile trip down river to the shore on Saturday, but returned to her favorite spot about the bridge.

August 29, 2014
Bridget has settled in for a few days in Milford, CT on the Housatonic River right next to the Igor I. Sikorsky Memorial Bridge. There is at least one Osprey nest just up river from there, so the fishing is probably good there. Will this be a staging area for her, or will she make another short-hop in the next few days?

August 27, 2014
We have a new Project OspreyTrack co-sponsor this year. Residents at the Meredith Bay Colony Club in Meredith, NH have been watching an Osprey nest on a cell tower next to their facility for the last couple years and contributed funds to help support the project in 2014. Many thanks to Carolyn Sutcliffe (chief Osprey watcher) for her coordination and support.

August 26, 2014
Bridget left on August 20. After spending the morning exploring the river near the nest and up to Plymouth, she decided to hit the road and by 10am was well to the south of the nest near the Ayers Island Dam. By 2pm she was perched on the Connecticut River near Walpole. She followed the river south and ended the day right beside the Brattleboro Bridge (Rt. 9). By 10am on the 21st she was headed south again still following the Connecticut River, and she ended the day roosting by the river near Sunderland, MA. She followed the course of the river for most of the following day (22nd), but in the p.m. branched off in a more south-westerly course into Connecticut. She ended the day on the Housatonic River, just north of the Merritt Parkway, near Milford, CT. She spent all of the 23rd and 24th here.

You can also follow our birds with the interactive map link, via Twitter @OspreyNH, or with the new free smartphone app from Movebank: www.movebank.org/node/26985

August 20, 2014
Bridget has been doing a little exploring, including a little trip up to Loon Lake in Plymouth. But, generally she is staying close to home . . . where dinner is. Both Art and Guin are still around (and Bridget’s brother and sister) and providing regular meals at the nest.

August 13, 2014
Bridget was tagged on August 12, 2014 at Art’s nest in Bridgewater. She is a brother to Artoo and Bergen (tagged here in 2013) and of course daughter of Art. She was caught in a new record time of 6 minutes after we installed the trap.