March 26, 2003:  We will be archiving information about this swan shortly since we are no longer monitoring the animal.

November 4, 2002: No more to add on this bird at this time - still have received no additional radio signals.

September 24, 2002: Great Bear Lake. Unfortunately, we have not received any new radio signals since July 23 and we think the radio may have finally quit working. This swan was captured and fitted with a transmitter on February 27, 2001 in Essex County, so we have been tracking her for a year and 5 months. We obtained a lot of valuable movement information from this swan. We monitored her migration north in the spring of 2001, her nesting location in 2001, her migration south back to Virginia in the fall of 2001, her winter activities in Virginia during the winter of 2001-2002, her migration north in the spring of 2002, and her nesting location in the summer of 2002. The battery life for these radios is 1 - 1.5 years, so it lasted for about as long as we could hope for.

June 12 - July 23, 2002: Great Bear Lake. She has remained in this location for the past 6 weeks and we assume she is nesting here again this year.

May 26 – June 12, 2002: Great Bear Lake. She has traveled another 300 miles northwest to the western side of Great Bear Lake. She is located in the Smith Arm branch in the same area where she was last summer. She spent the entire summer of 2001 here and did not leave until late September. She probably nested and raised a brood of cygnets here, although we were never able to obtain a visual observation of her this past winter to confirm this. It will be interesting to see if she stays in the same area again this year.

May 21, 2002: Lac La Martre: She made another quick stop in the area around Lac La Martre. She has moved into the boreal forest region and appears to be on the same track she followed on her migration last year (see archived log above from last year). She is probably waiting for the weather to clear before she proceeds further north.

May 17, 2002: Great Slave Lake: She traveled another 650 miles northwest to the western end of Great Slave Lake at the origin of the MacKenzie River in southern Nunavut (Northwest Territories). Great Slave Lake is one of the largest lakes in northern Canada. She stopped here only briefly before moving slightly further northwest (150 miles) to the area around Lac La Martre.

May 8-13, 2002: Central Saskatchewan, Canada. She moved ~700 miles northwest into central Saskatchewan and is located just south of Lac La Ronge. She is located north of the prairie pothole region on the southern edge of the temperate forest zone. There are larger, more permanent water areas here and she is probably staging on a large pond in this area.

April 12-30, 2002: Fargo, North Dakota. This swan moved 450 miles west and spent 2-3 weeks in the Red River Valley on the North Dakota-Minnesota border. She spent a couple weeks here last year around this same time. Several of our other swans are also in the Red River Valley, which appears to be a very important migratory stopover for these birds.

April 7, 2002: Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. She moved 200 miles west and is located near Sturgeon Bay on the western side of Lake Michigan.

April 3, 2002: Lake Huron, Michigan. She moved 100 miles west across Lake Huron and is now located in the south end of Saginaw Bay near Bay City, Michigan.

March 17-21, 2002: Lake Huron. She moved 200 miles northwest of her last location to the eastern side of Lake Huron near the town of Grand Bend in Ontario, Canada. Interestingly, she had stopped in this area last year on her migration north. It will be interesting to see if the timing and route of her migration will be the same this year. Two of our other satellite-equipped swans (#33892 and 33894 - see below) have also stopped in this area and are located within 20 miles of this bird.

March 12, 2002: Pennsylvania. The swan has started the first leg of its long spring migration to its arctic nesting grounds. We received a location in central Pennsylvania near the town of Grassflat, 300 miles northwest of her previous location. We don’t know if she stopped at this location or if she was in route up to the Great Lakes region. We have not seen any of our other swans stop in this area.

December 28, 2001 - March 11, 2002: Northern Neck of Virginia. The swan has remained on the Northern Neck of Virginia. This area is bordered by the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers and includes fresh and tidal marshes, and adjacent agricultural fields. This region is an important wintering area for swans and generally has between 2-6,000 swans each year. She is using the same marshes and agricultural fields near where she was caught in February 2001.