Northern Attraction

There seem to be some unknown factor(s) involved in keeping two of our tagged birds hanging out in the north. Like Linda last year, these peregrines are taking their own sweet time before heading seriously to the south.

Don writes...
"Elizabetha stayed in the same area for another day, but we finally received one more weak (qual. 0) signal for Fireball. Qual 0 signals aren't normally plotted unless there are multiple signals close together for confirmation, but this one appears to be in a very reasonable location; so, in the absence of any other information, it has been included on the maps. This fix indicates that Fireball has flown 497 km (309 mi) in the past 9 days and is now near the shore of Akimiski Island in James Bay, at the south end of Hudson Bay, which is a perfectly straight-line extension of his previously known path."

So we apparently have Fireball remaining in the same area of southern Hudson Bay, i.e. James Bay, exactly as Linda did last fall. And I clearly recall speaking to a Polar Bear biologist in Thompson last October who told me about the many peregrines he saw perched along the duck-rich shoreline of James Bay and the famous waterfowl hunting season that goes on there every fall.

So are these birds exploiting the prey sources at James Bay to fatten up prior to the long flight to South America?

Is Elizabetha doing the same thing along the shores of Ungava Bay? Again like Linda, she remains quite far to the north fairly late in the season, at a latitude equivalent to SE Alaska.

Are we seeing a normal but undescribed late migration in fall among these "deep" peregrines? They are among the latest known migrant peregrines in the spring months. And now, at least three (Linda, Fireball and Elizabetha) are among the latest known fall migrants as well.