Hi!
I had a thrilling summer full of discovery.
For any of those who have chatted with me about why I wanted to deploy GPS trackers, you have probably heard me gripe about a particular female bird who nests on the southern end of Assawoman Island, hereafter referred to as “Miss Cay”. Last year, when I was dependent on binoculars and a spotting scope to resight individuals and see where they were foraging, I spent countless hours trying not to blink standing atop a dune waiting for this particular individual to make a feeding flight. Inevitably, I tended to blink at the exact moment this individual decided to take off! It took multiple trips and more than 16 hours to figure out that she would fly more than 2 km away before getting out of sight and disappearing. I had no way of knowing where she was feeding at the northern end because she was unbanded. Oh the frustration of studying live animals!
Well, that is no longer a problem. She is banded with the band combo black triangle CAY, and I put a GPS tracker on her, although not without difficulty. She is a wily one and escaped our trap more than 12 times before we caught her.
Photo credit: Mario Balitbit
The results... are wild. While most of the GPS tagged birds are staying within 500 meters of their nest site to feed on mole crabs on the oceanside, or going up to 2 km away to use bayside mudflats, Miss CAY is traveling south to Cedar Island, which is three islands away from her nesting island (12.6 km away -- see tracking image below). I was vindicated. I also confirmed that she is traveling quite far north to feed as well, up to the causeway bridge onto Wallops Island, the neighboring island that I pass through to access Assawoman Island (6 km away).
I haven't figured out why Miss Cay insists on travelling so far to feed, when there is available feeding habitat that multiple breeding pairs use directly behind her nest (within 600 meters).
Perhaps she was born on Cedar Island, and wants to be closer to home once she is done breeding for the season. Once I get more data from her next season, I might be one step closer to figuring out this mystery.
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