Maiden voyage: osprey 'Jil' already near S. America

LACONIA — Iain MacLeod, executive director of the Squam Lakes Natural Science Center, expects to be wearing out the edge of his seat over the coming days, as he anxiously watches as three osprey he's observed all summer make the dangerous fall migration to South America. Thanks to a tracking program the science center is participating in, MacLeod can watch as the birds make every step of their voyage.

Project Osprey Track is a collaboration between the Squam Lakes Natural Science Center, Public Service of New Hampshire and Dr. Richard "Rob" Bierregaard, a research professor with the University of North Carolina. Through the project, MacLeod and Bierregaard have caught many osprey in the Northeastern United States and attached small transmitters on their backs. The devices regularly send updates, relayed to the scientists via a communications satellite, which report the bird's location, direction, altitude and speed.

MacLeod has been keeping a blog, integrated with Google Earth, regarding the birds' progress. To view the blog, go to www.nhnature.org/osprey_project/maps.html, where the maps are organized by individual bird.

Local birds involved in the study include "Art," an adult male who nests in Bridgewater, and two siblings hatched this spring, "Chip" and "Jill," who grew up in Tilton, near the J. Jill building. "Art", guided by experience, is expected to have a successful voyage to his winter home in South America. For the young birds, though, their survival is uncertain. Statistically, less than half of first-year osprey will survive the trip to South America.

Those who succeed will spend two years in the Southern Hemisphere until they reach sexual maturity, then they will fly north again to establish a territory and try to attract a mate. MacLeod hopes the tracking devices will help illustrate how young adult osprey go about that process. First, though, they have to fly down the East Coast, island-hop across the Caribbean and make a long, open-water flight from the Dominican Republic to the northern coast of South America. One of the three birds could be making that flight as this article goes to print.

That it's a dangerous journey was underscored last year. MacLeod and his collaborators were able to place a transmitter on a single bird, "Saco," who was blown off course by a storm during that open-water journey. MacLeod watched as the transmitter relayed data that described her dropping altitude, then the bird floating for a few days in the open sea, then the transmissions stopped.

MacLeod is hoping this migration won't be as traumatic for the scientists and bird-watchers observing from afar.

Of the local birds involved in the project, "Chip" was the first to leave the nest. He departed on the morning of August 21 and proceeded nearly due south through New Hampshire, veering to the southeast at the Massachusetts border and spent his first night away from the nest on an island in Boston Harbor. The next day he flew to the Narragansett River in Rhode Island — where he's remained since. MacLeod said the data shows he's active and fishing, apparently healthy, but for whatever reason has not yet felt the need to push on. After consulting with Bierregaard, who has tracked dozens of osprey, it's not unheard of for the birds to as much as a month-long vacation midway through their migration. "For whatever reason, he's just hanging out." MacLeod hopes the young "Chip" doesn't wait too long, though.

Though they were nest-mates, "Chip" and "Jill" apparently have completely different migration strategies. "Jill" didn't leave the nest until September 10, and she hasn't shown an appetite for sight-seeing. She flew due south through New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Rhode Island — passing within 15 miles of where her brother has taken up temporary residence. She covered 212 miles in her first day of migration, finally stopping to roost on Long Island.

That pace, it turned out, was par for "Jill's" course. She has averaged about 175 miles per day since then. Her path has followed the eastern coastline, then down the middle of the Florida peninsula, and by Sept. 19 she was in Cuba. As of Tuesday, September 25, "Jill" had followed the southern coast of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, barely stopping for a breather on that island's southernmost peninsula before lighting off for the 360-mile, open sea flight to South America.

By 7 p.m. on September 25, "Jill" had already covered 250 of the 360 miles of sea crossing, leaving 100 miles to be flown overnight. MacLeod was eagerly awaiting the next batch of data, hoping it will show her continued progress.

"Jill's" unwavering direction and steady progress look like the path of a more experienced bird, and MacLeod hopes that's just the case. Although only three local birds have been tagged, many more osprey are making the same journey. And, he suspects, every one of those birds on the east coast and in eastern Canada will fly through Florida. "There must be so many ospreys — there's literally got to be hundreds of ospreys heading through," said MacLeod. "It's such a picture-perfect migration, I'm hoping she's got plenty of company and she's just following along."

"Art's" migration began on Sept. 11, a day later than "Jill's". A bird who has made this flight many times before, his survival is expected by MacLeod. However, his migration is interesting nonetheless, as his Bridgewater nest is the most northern of any others in the collaborative study. Unlike the Tilton siblings, "Art" followed a mountainous, inland route that tracked the Appalachians through South Carolina. He didn't see the coast until Georgia. His progress has been steady but less urgent than that of "Jill," and the most recent data showed him still in Florida — not as far as "Jill", but plenty far for this time of year. "He's making it look like he's done this many times before," said MacLeod.

The tracking program, he said, "has been fun so far." That fun will be replaced with anxiety, though, until the transmitters report that the birds have safely reached their journey's end. "We're getting to the traumatic time," he said.

CAPTION for OSPREY JILL in AA:

This map shows the progress that "Jill," an osprey hatched earlier this year in Tilton, has made in her first migration to South America. The Squam Lakes Natural Science Center is participating in a tracking program and keeping a blog on the progress of three local birds. (Courtesy image)

CAPTION for OSPREY JILL CHIP & ART:

"Chip", "Art" and "Jill," three local osprey, are being tracked by, among others, the Squam Lakes Natural Science Center. The birds have each taken a unique strategy to their migration to South America. (Courtesy image)