While Blue DF flies south through Senegal, Blue JV3 is continuing to stop over near the Gulf of Morbihan on the Brittany coast. Blue JV3 refers to the bird’s colour ring on his left leg, but those of you who follow our Facebook page will know that we asked for suggestions for a name for Blue JV3 to use in our updates. We very much enjoyed reading all your suggestions but in the end by far the most popular name was ‘Jules’ after the French novelist Jules Verne (i.e. JV), most famous for his adventure novels including Around the World in Eighty Days. It seems fitting therefore that Blue JV3, or Jules as we will now refer to him, is stopping-over in France. Thanks to Janine Pannett for the great suggestion.
Having arrived on Saturday 16th September Jules has spent most of his time in a 40 km² area stretching from the west end of Gulf of Morbihan north to a short section of the River Auray, north of the town of Auray, and then across to his favoured roosting area in the forested banks of the River Bono north of Plougoumelen.
Blue JV3 has tended to favour two areas to the north-west of Gulf of Morbihan since arriving on 16th September. The red shaded areas include 50% of GPS fixes since he arrived
Blue JV3 often roosts beside the River Bono
In recent days Blue JV3 has spent most afternoons beside the River Auray
It will be interesting to see how long Jules remains at Gulf of Morbihan. Another of our satellite tagged birds, Nimrod, stopped-over on Ile d’Oleron, a small island situated just to the south of La Rochelle in autumn 2008, 2009 and 2010. In each year he favoured the same forested area in the south of the island and fished along the coast once or twice a day. In 2010 he spent a total of nineteen days on the island, thereby constituting almost half of the total days (40) it took to migrate to its wintering site in Guinea-Bissau. Don’t forget that you can check out all of Jules’ recent movements on our interactive map.
