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Something Wild: Tracking Osprey

NHPR

We’re at an osprey nest in Tilton with Iain McLeod, director of Squam Lakes Natural Science Center. Our goal is recruiting another individual for Project OspreyTrack. He explains that Project OspreyTrack began in 2011, “to try to understand a little bit more about osprey migration and foraging.” 

Each year, MacLeod and his team outfit a handful of juveniles and adult males with GPS backpacks. He says since the females don’t leave the nest much between laying the eggs and fall migration they offer far fewer data points than the males. “We find out where they go for fishing [in New Hampshire] and to follow them all the way down to South America.”

The nest we find ourselves at is on a platform, built byMacLeodhimself, atop a forty-foot pole just off the road. Looking around it’s probably not the location you’d pick to situate an osprey nest in; the outlet mall and route 93 are each just a stone’s throw away from where we stand. Notwithstanding,MacLeodsuggests there are many features that recommend the site. 

“The river’s right here, Silver Lake is not far, there’s a good supply of fishing spots, [which is good because] they’re the only bird of prey to feed exclusively on fish.” It must be allowed that he knows what he’s talking about because the parents who’ve raised the chicks we’re looking to tag today have raised chicks here every year since he put the platform up. “So it’s worked for them and we’ve had an opportunity to learn about them so it’s become a great nest for science.” “Traditionally, osprey would have nested on a dead tree or a canopy pine,” MacLeod says. “They like to be up high, the very tallest point within any habitat.” But these days, the vast majority of osprey nests are on manmade structures like this pole in Tilton, or even cell phone towers.  The pole is conveniently located so that MacLeod’s team could easily drive a bucket truck up to it ad raise someone up to bait and set the trap. That someone is Rob Bierregaard, a Research Associate of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University. The trap we’re using is his own design, and one that he’s refined over the years. After depositing a couple of herring in the nest, he then drops a large piece of heavy-gauge chicken wire on top of them. To the chicken wire is tied dozens of nearly invisible mono-filament copper slip-knots. When the juvenile osprey comes in to grab breakfast, he ends up having his talons snared in the slip-knots. 

Once we’ve set the trap, it’s just a matter of waiting…it could be ten minutes, it could be ten hours before the trap bears fruit. We’re fortunate today, within a half-hour we hear the unmistakable calls of a juvenile osprey curious about the meal that has appeared in its nest. Moments later he is tethered to the nest. That’sBierregaard’scue to go up in the bucket truck again and retrieve the trapped osprey. His first order of business is to grab the birds legs in one hand to keep it from hopping all over the place. Then he delicately slips a hood over the osprey’s head (deftly avoiding a few lunges from the sharp beak). “Once you put the hood on its amazing how they quite right down, says MacLeod, “because they’re not getting that visual stimulation. They’re really very docile when they’ve got the hood on.” Bierregaard then goes to work cutting the slip-knots from the bird’s feet, using of all things a ail clipper to cut the mono-filament. Shortly, he comes down with a becalmed bird, the 94th osprey he’s tagged in his 16 years of doing this. In that time, he’s created quite a roadmap of where osprey travel, he calls it the osprey “Highway to the Tropics.” And it is like a highway because many of the birds follow the same path that the other osprey do. “It’s the same general path,” clarifies Bierregaard, “they’re all going through Cuba to Hispaniola before they spread out all over South America. But an individual bird doesn’t go the same way each year. They’re not following a series of landmarks from point A to point B...” 

With his years of experience,Bierregaardmakes short work of banding this ten-week old chick; and though she – we think she’s a she – though she’s still learning the ropes from her parents, she’s full size and pretty much equipped for life at this point. He then fits her with the satellite tracker. “There are two straps that go over the wings, and two that go under the wings. And where they cross over, I stitch them together.” And with that the latest participant of Project Osprey Track – Juliet – is officially on the wing. You can keep tabs on her here.  

Copyright 2015 New Hampshire Public Radio

Chris Martin has worked with New Hampshire Audubon for more than 19 years as a Senior Biologist in the organization's Conservation Department. His work has focused primarily on monitoring and management of New Hampshire's endangered or threatened birds, especially birds of prey such as bald eagles, ospreys, and peregrine falcons. A wildlife biologist with almost 30 years of diverse experience, Martin has climbed to bald eagle nests in Alaska's Katmai National Park, counted seabirds near the Aleutian Islands, coordinated peregrine falcon restoration at Isle Royale in Lake Superior, helped research a wildlife habitat field guide in Minnesota, and studied how a southern Indiana forest responded after a devastating tornado. Since moving to New Hampshire in 1990, Martin has worked frequently with colleagues at the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Forest Service, and other agencies to recruit, train, and deploy volunteer wildlife observers when and where they are needed. He has advised electric utiliies on how to establish safe nesting sites for ospreys, partnered with rock climbers to collect peregrine falcon egg samples to check for environmental contaminants, and documented New Hampshire's only known breeding population of American pipits in the alpine zone on Mt. Washington. In 2006, Martin received an Environmental Merit Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Boston for his outstanding efforts in preserving New England's environment. “I view my role as one of documenting what's going on with wildlife populations in the Granite State, and also providing folks with the knowledge and training they need to make meaningful wildlife observations out there on their own. That's one of the reasons I find contributing to Something Wild to be so enjoyable.”
Andrew Parrella came to NHPR in 2007 and is our main producer of all on-air promotions and station imaging spots. He also produces our weekly features Giving Matters and Something Wild and works on special projects like StoryCorps. Most recently, Andrew has been spearheading the push to digitize NHPR's audio archive, and has been polishing and posting gems on the newly created From The Archives blog. Parrella worked at WGBH Radio in Boston, filing stories for the Marketplace Health Desk and working on a number of news and documentary pilot projects. Before his radio career, Andrew spent the better part of a decade as a technician at theatres around New England from Burlington, Vermont to Matunuck, Rhode Island.

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