On a Friday morning in early March, a lone osprey took flight. Rising above an Amazonian jungle filled with hyacinthine macaws and other colorful tropical creatures, soaring away from the bass- and piranha-filled river that had helped to sustain him over the winter, the osprey began the first leg of a 4,000-mile journey. His final destination: a nesting platform on Nantucket, otherwise known as home.
by Katharine Wroth
It would be a long solo trip, but this bird was far from alone. The male osprey – known as Mr. Hannah to his fans – was cheered along by scientists, schoolchildren, Nantucket residents, and others who were able to follow his progress online thanks to the cutting-edge GPS tracking device he wore.
This migratory monitoring was part of a collaborative study by The Trustees and Nantucket’s Maria Mitchell Association (MMA). In May 2009, MMA’s Dr. Robert Kennedy and the University of North Carolina’s Dr. Rob Bierregaard captured the bird using netting and fitted him with the tiny backpack-like transmitter, which weighs about an ounce. Since then, people on and off the island have tracked Mr. Hannah through regular email and web updates and colorful Google maps. Clippings from the local newspaper adorned classroom walls, and customers in the local store discussed the bird’s whereabouts, says Steve Nicolle, Operations Manager for the Southeast Region and superintendent of The Trustees properties on the island. Nicolle, who observed the initial capture with his daughter, the bird’s namesake, says Mr. Hannah is “a pretty popular fellow out here.”
The bird’s round-trip to South America has not only been a great way to get schoolchildren interested in science and geography, it’s been goosebump-inducing for the scientists themselves. The GPS technology that allows such precise monitoring has only become available in recent years, and fully understanding the bird’s daily habits is a “dream come true,” says Kennedy, Director of Natural Sciences at MMA.
For Kennedy and Bierregaard, who has studied osprey populations on Martha’s Vineyard since 1969, the initial goal was to better understand why Mr. Hannah’s nest at the Coskata-Coatue Wildlife Refuge, a Trustees property, was repeatedly failing to produce viable chicks. During the first few months of the project, they observed Mr. Hannah’s fishing patterns, discovering that he was searching for food all over the island, not just in the area around the nest as previously thought. This information, combined with initial observations of Mr. Hannah’s health, suggested both a possible food shortage and, as Bierregaard put it, that “this bird’s hunting abilities may not be the best.”
In September, Mr. Hannah left the island – “like a jet out of Logan,” says Nicolle – and began making his way south. For many observers, that’s when the excitement really started. “I’ve known about migration forever, of course,” Nicolle says. “But this shone a new light on things – to really see that this bird flew four thousand miles and back was incredible.”
Now that Mr. Hannah is home and settling back into life with Mrs. Hannah – ospreys mate for life, although they migrate separately – he’ll be relieved of his tiny bird backpack. But the partnership between The Trustees and MMA, which has “always been a close relationship,” says Nicolle, will continue. This year, the groups will use the transmitter to track a bird from a nearby nest. And they’ll hold a contest for local schoolchildren to name Nantucket’s new avian star.
How Mr. Hannah Got His Name
This collaborative tracking project was made possible by an anonymous donor, a friend of the The Trustees who is also a summer resident of Nantucket. Invited to name the bird after himself, he suggested the name Hannah instead, after Trustees staffer Steve Nicolle’s 14-year-old daughter, who has been involved with osprey banding projects since she was a child; the
prefix was added for the sake of scientific accuracy.
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