Monday, January 11, 2016

Where are they Wintering?

Happy New Year!

Wow, the end of 2015 really flew by! We hope everyone had a wonderful holiday spent with family and friends.

   We are happy to report that we are still receiving locations for four of the five birds tagged in 2015. 
Chenango, the juvenile tagged on migration is wintering in Mexico. Until recently, she was wintering west of Mexico City. Just last week she moved south along the coast in Oaxaca and has now made it to Tabasco. Ridgena, from Hawk Mountain, is wintering in Colombia in the Cordillera Oriental Mountain Range! Known as the East Andes, the Cordillera Oriental is part of the three branches of the Colombian Andes. She has been there since the middle of October and it seems like the perfect place for a Broadwing to winter!

   Pocono Penny (Delaware State Forest-Stoney Acres site) is in the Amazon in Brazil, not too far from the border of Colombia, Peru and Brazil. Once reaching South America, Pocono Penny's movements are the most similar to Abbo's. Currently, Pocono Penny is staying within one small area compared to Abbo who continued to move while on her wintering grounds throughout Brazil.
   Sadie, the third female tagged in the Delaware State Forest has moved the furthest south. Instead of moving into Brazil from Colombia she stayed west and continued moving down through Peru. Near the end of November she flew into the Tambopata National Reserve which is in the Peruvian Amazon Basin and her current location as of 9 January 2016.

   Unfortunately, we believe Rachel Carson from the Delaware State Forest (Mud Pond site) did not survive due to the location points prior to the last time her unit was on and signaled. She did make it all the way to Nicaragua and was wintering it what looks to be a agricultural area with fragmented forest. 

Movements as of 8 January 2015
Keep up with the birds @
http://www.hawkmountain.org/birdtracker/

   In other Broadwing Project news, Rebecca had a great trip out west at the Raptor Research Conference in November to present preliminary results on Broadwing migration. She met a lot of great people and met up with several former Hawk Mt trainees, saw some fantastic talks and enjoyed all things raptors for 5 days!
Former HMS Conservation Science Trainees at the 2015 RRF Conference. Top Left: Katie Harrington, Rebecca McCabe, Anna Autilio. Bottom Left: Hankyu Kim and Jean-Francois Therrien (Hawk Mountain Biologist)

   We recently finished watching the nest camera videos, and all of the data has been entered. We found many similarities between both years as well as some differences. We will be sure to post a few videos from the nesting pair in Shartlesville in the next blog for everyone to see. In addition to videos we have begun to assess habitat around nest and roost sites.
   The next few months will be filled with analyses as we being to dive into the data from the last two years. We will continue to update you on the birds and the work we are doing!

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