A Saskatchewan osprey travelled more than 1,000 kilometres a day en route to wintering grounds in Ecuador and Colombia this fall.
Such detailed information came from a solar-powered transmitter that was strapped to the female osprey in Saskatchewan on July 2.
Stuart Houston of Nature Saskatchewan marveled at the “fantastic information” sent daily via satellite.
“We had no idea,” he said.
“We knew the approximate route from banding, but we did not know the speed before.”
Houston, a bird bander for 59 years, said it was generally assumed the birds took about two months to fly south and two months to return to Saskatchewan.
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The transmitters show that the osprey left the nesting site near Rosthern Aug. 10, kept close to the Saskatchewan River around Saskatoon from Aug. 30 to Sept. 3 before travelling 266 kilometres to Avonlea, Sask. and 643 kilometres the next day to the Black Hills.
During two days on the next leg of the journey, the female travelled 2,052 kilometres to Matador, Texas.
“To find a bird is going 1,000 kilometres a day for two days just boggles the mind,” Houston said. “You wouldn’t drive that far.”
The osprey then visited Vera Cruz and was in the Chiapas region of Mexico on Oct. 9.
Houston expects it will winter in South America for about three months before returning to Saskatchewan to nest. His group hopes to monitor the bird’s migration over the next few years, although that depends on whether the osprey survives.
Houston noted Idaho’s osprey
population typically migrates to Central America, while the Canadian group
bypasses the region and flies on to its wintering grounds further south.
“They come from farther north and go farther south,” he said.
An expert dispatched from the Raptor Centre in Idaho helped Houston’s group attach the transmitter.
Larry Christie of SaskPower said the crown corporation paid half of the costs for the $6,000 project, while Nature Saskatchewan paid the rest.
SaskPower has also erected nesting poles for osprey that return annually to the same nests around Rosthern and Hague.
Osprey nests have been common around Loon Lake for the last 28 years, but recently they have started moving out of the mixed forest and into the parkland where the fishing is good.
Houston said they like to see their fishing grounds and often nest on power poles along the Saskatchewan River.
Christie said the utility became concerned about potential harm to the birds and disruption to electrical services after one naturalist found the binder twine used in osprey nests smoldering on live wires.
SaskPower was approached to build nesting sites on poles within 50 metres of the original nests. Naturalists then moved the nests to their new, safer homes.
Christie said SaskPower is involved in similar projects with burrowing owls and piping plovers.
“We supply the materials, pole, labour and they supply the expertise.”
Houston, with Nature Saskatchewan and the Saskatoon Nature Society, has been banding the birds for the last three summers at these new poles.
“There’s a great danger of young or adults getting electrocuted, the power line
could burn up or go out of commission,” Houston said.
“This was a win-win situation, because it protects their power line, it protects the osprey and it protects us (banders).”
The female osprey whose flight is being recorded was caught in a carpet trap laid over the young in their nest.
Her talons became caught in the nooses when she returned to feed and naturalists were able to attach the 35 gram transmitter and antenna to the one kilogram bird.
Houston said ospreys, bald eagles and peregrine falcons were almost wiped out years ago by the pesticide DDT, but have since largely recovered.
