Osprey Chat Thread for October, November & December 2013

Unknown said:

As far as I am aware the Argos system based in Toulouse uses European Met op satellites so I am not sure if they also are linked to the NASA ones. We will have to wait and see.

Argos say they use two ground (or earth ) stations, one in Toulouse, the other in ....Washington DC. These stations  must be the third  point in the data transfer, after the bird as source and the satellite as the second, they are data gatherers. What happens after the ground station? I would assume that the Washington facility would be kept running for security reasons, weather stations and so on. It is the next stages in the data flow, that cause concern. Where do the users get the data from and how does that facility link to the ground station? US system/telecom/communication utilities are likely to be involved.

If there is a problem we will know quite soon, I think.

JSB: Thank you for that informative post.

As of now, 800,000 federal workers have been locked out of their jobs. Only agency functions that are critical to "protect life and property" are getting done. So any non-essential task that must be performed by a federal employee will not be completed. I know that Argos is a vast global system. I hope it's not so integrated that the U.S. failure will create havoc.

Oh, peas ...........

Thank you Diane and thank you ALAN TIGER JSB

as Chloe says, terrible times. I think I'll hibernate.

Data downloaded fine at Lotl today so no reason why LG data shouldn't download as normal too, but agree awful time for US Wildlife and govt employees.

Thank you for the update DIANE and KATEP.  Let's hope the LG download is fine too.

This might be of interest for those who live close to Rutland.

I am finding the journeys of both WHITE 14 and 15 from Lake District very interesting.

Both sibblings have taken an unusual routing directly south through Algeria towards Mali to pick up the Niger River tributries although I understand that 15 was still in Algeria heading south (Slow and Low - a little worrying over desert barren of fishing grounds) and 14 in The Ivory Coast.

I think this gives us much evidence that routings for these birds is provided through a hereditary function or at least part of it is at birth by one of the parents. I say one of the parents as I would find it unusual for both parents to adopt this unusual routing for UK migratory ospreys.

I hope this opens up a wee bit of discussion as I am very interested to hear others opinions on this migration pattern of two sibblings.

SPEY from 2010 (HFW) also followed this route in 2010 but hit Liberia to the west of the Ivory Coast before heading back up north to Guinea Bissau via Sierra Leone and Guinea.

I do not follow the Scandanavian birds enough to know there full routing to see if any of them go to similar places. Is it possible one of the parents the male maybe is of Scandanavian origin - we know of origin of female WHITE KL but maybe not her parentage.

All this is of great interest.

I find the routes these birds take very interesting. This information can also come from ringed birds. A ringed latvian bird (red) was seen recently in Western France & the Finnish bird is maybe still here. Although hereditary must play a role, I think weather systems must also come into it. After all, normally if you were going from Latvia to Africa you wouldn't pass by the Atlantic coast. We seem to have had an extraordinary number of Ospreys coming through this way this year.

Edit :Just done a tot up & so far 63 observations against 74 in the same period last year, so that theory is out of the window!!

Unknown said:

I hope this opens up a wee bit of discussion as I am very interested to hear others opinions on this migration pattern of two siblings.

There are a lot of discussions going on.

I personally was reminded of  R03    and   T01

Both these birds had very easterly passages through the Sahara.

Tim's blog after the Symposium in France