This thread has been set up to follow the travels of Caledonia and Alba, the young ospreys raised at Loch Garten in 2012.
Their mother is “EJ”, the resident female at Loch Garten since 2003; there is some doubt about the identity of their biological father, given EJ’s dalliance with a male from a neighbouring nest, Blue XD, both before and after the return of her regular partner Odin, who raised them.
Caledonia hatched on 16th May and Alba on 18th May; they both fledged on 14th July.
This is a link to the Loch Garten blog describing the ringing and satellite tagging.
Caledonia’s ring is Blue/White AA1, reading downwards. Alba’s is Blue/White AA2, reading upwards.
Following the tracking
This page gives a quick overview of the routes on a map, which will be more useful once they start migrating.
If you want to look at the routes in more detail on Google Earth, this page contains instructions on setting up your PC to do this.
This blog contains some useful information about how the tracking works – we are now on a 3-day reporting period.
I was hoping for news today on Caledonia and maybe tomorrow now.
Only a few plots on Google Earth this week for Caledonia. 2 on 23rd, 1 on 25th and 1on 27th :
Thanks Alan but I see a straight line and maybe foolish but why a straight line? Is data missing and not very good with GE and really appreciate. Yes Caledonia is settled but some data must me missing and I know problems last week.
New blog from Richard.
I have found some info about the property with a pond which Caley visited twice last week:
It's called Hacienda La Concepción, or Hacienda de la Víbora, and appears on this site about historic buildings of Andalusia.
I hope they don't mind (or perhaps notice) Caledonia helping herself from their lake, which is what she seems to be up to......
I hope the following will be helpful in understanding how the data is plotted on Google Earth and what it means.
The line is straight because of the way data is collected. There are two data points per day, at 08.00 and 16.00 hours, at the moment. I plot the most interesting (in my mind) data points from a total of 14 in a weeks data, to give an idea of the area Caledonia covers in her travels. When these points are entered into the Google Earth programme it assumes that there is a straight line path from one point to the next but as I do not enter all 14 points for the week or even two points for the day it may be that the straight line is between a point at 8 hrs, 1 day, 2 days, etc. earlier. The important thing to look at is where the point is to see where she goes rather than how she gets there.
Most of the time Caledonia is not recorded far from the Huelva site so she does not appear to travel far. However at an average flight speed of approximately 25 km per hour she could travel up to 100 km from,say, the Huelva roost and be back before the next data point and we would have no idea where she has been.
I have said why I only plot a few points but you may reasonably ask why I do not plot them all. There are two reasons. Firstly, most of the points are close to the Huelva site so do not add any new information. Secondly, it is quite a time consuming exercise to collate and plot the data and I am just a volunteer with a number of other things to do! I am saving my time and energies for when the new birds are tagged, travelling around the LG reserve and then on migration. At that time there will be 9 data points per bird per day every 3 days to deal with - so a lot of work!
Mike
Hi Mike
Yes I understand that - and thanks for taking the job on.
One thing which it would be interesting to do with Caledonia, is to publish her data for a few complete days, once the transmitter goes back to sending 9 points per day, which I think is on 8th March? I am sure Roberto would be interested in getting a more precise idea of her daily routine, to add to his own observations.
Here's something I meant to post from a few weeks back - Caley's overnight trip on 7/8 Feb to the Jarrama reservoir, near the town of Nerva and about 30 miles NW of her roost.
Its main attraction seems to be the black bass
This trip is interesting for another reason - apart from being the furthest she's been since last September, it's also the first time she's left the Guadalquivir basin. The Jarrama joins the Rio Tinto to reach the sea at Huelva, one of the sites for the osprey reintroduction project which Roberto has worked on.
Thanks SUE.....interesting facts and a very interesting image.
Y
Unknown said: New blog from Richard. I have found some info about the property with a pond which Caley visited twice last week: It's called Hacienda La Concepción, or Hacienda de la Víbora, and appears on this site about historic buildings of Andalusia. I hope they don't mind (or perhaps notice) Caledonia helping herself from their lake, which is what she seems to be up to......
Unknown said: Hi Mike Yes I understand that - and thanks for taking the job on. One thing which it would be interesting to do with Caledonia, is to publish her data for a few complete days, once the transmitter goes back to sending 9 points per day, which I think is on 8th March? I am sure Roberto would be interested in getting a more precise idea of her daily routine, to add to his own observations.