Spring? tracking the osprey's return

We have changed the clocks. We have cleaned the course (some areas several times). We have seeded the tee divots. We have had a few days in the 60's. OK that last one isn't very normal for our Spring weather but the rest of them sure point towards the end of Winter. Yet the roller coaster weather continues. We had a snow storm Friday and temperatures in the teens all weekend. Today we are getting a major storm but the snow turned to rain and washed it all away and is chipping away at the snow on the ground. The ground is frozen and putting up a good fight though. The wind is the main concern right now with forecasts for 60+ mph gusts. Eventually we will be through with this nonsense and actually playing golf again.

West Chop dock

Heart rock

The pinkletinks started up and then froze so went back to sleep. The red wing black birds returned but one of the best signs of Spring is the return of our mascot the osprey. The screen grab below shows a bit of a spreadsheet I keep to track important parts of the job such as first mowing etc. The earliest the osprey has returned is 3/7 and is generally at the end of the month. We were the first pole erected by Gus Ben David in an effort to help the osprey after being threatened by DDT. We have had a mating pair on our pole since the 70's and were a vital part to the resurgence of this great bird. See more HERE or do a search of Osprey Mink Meadows and all sorts of interesting stuff will appear.

I found this really cool app called Animal Tracker. You can zoom in on birds that are tagged with a GPS unit. They have bios and a bit of history on them. You can click on two animations for activity last year or last two weeks. The pictures below show a screen grab of an osprey tagged on MV. The green bird is where she was in March of 2016 and then the red dot at the end of the red line is where she is now. Belle has made a move north in the last two weeks. It will be fun to see her make the journey from South America all the way back up to our little island in the North East.

great phone app to follow GPS tagged birds

Follow Belle as she makes her way home to MV