To the amazing naturalist and educator Gus Ben David who has tirelessly shepherded the Martha’s Vineyard osprey population from two pairs in 1970 to more than ninety pairs in 2014 and lovingly shared his knowledge of the island’s natural history with generations of children young and old R B For my skydance partner Brian Lionel Carpenter All my love and shiny things K G ii
Contents Foreword iv Chapter 1 Reunion on the Marsh 1 Chapter 2 The Scientists 5 Chapter 3 First Flight 9 Chapter 4 Captured 13 Chapter 5 First Fish 21 Chapter 6 Migration 29 Chapter 7 Island Hopping 35 Chapter 8 Hurricane 41 Chapter 9 Over the Mountains 47 Chapter 10 The Sea of Green 51 Chapter A Long Vacation 57 Chapter 12 A Busy Summer 61 Chapter 13 Homeward Bound 65 Chapter 14 Across the Gulf 71 Chapter 15 A Meal Lost 77 Chapter 16 Homecoming 81 Chapter 17 A New Pair of Ospreys 87 Chapter 18 A Final Reunion 93 Chapter 19 Journey’s End 97 Information and Resources 99 Osprey Basics 99 Migration 100 Injured Wildlife 101 Resources 102 Acknowledgments 104 Index 106 iii
Foreword Have you noticed that some birds disappear in the winter If you live near water where big fish-eating hawks called ospreys live you know that they all leave in the fall Did you ever wonder where they go And how they find their way there and back again Can you imagine an adventure where you leave your home behind and fly over the ocean alone and all you can see all the way to the horizon is open water Would you keep flying for two days straight on the first leg of your trip not knowing what lay ahead of you This is the story of a young osprey named Belle who migrated four thousand miles from Martha’s Vineyard an island off the coast of Massachusetts to Brazil at the southern edge of the Amazon rain forest in South America This is also a story about four people I’m Dr B who followed Belle’s travels and what they learned about a young osprey’s first migration I study ospreys and track them by putting small radio transmitters on them The radios send messages via satellite so I can follow the ospreys as they migrate south in the fall and north in the spring Over sixteen years my fellow scientists and I have put transmitters on ninety five ospreys from South Carolina to New Hampshire Thirty-one of these birds were from Martha’s Vineyard There are lots of reasons why scientists track ospreys with transmitters transmitters but the most important one is what makes all scientists do what they do curiosity A scientist looks at the world and just has to ask questions Scientists find the world wonderful what they notice around them makes them full of wonder They want to know why this insect is so brightly colored and why that one is camouflaged Why do most trees drop their leaves in the fall What about the trees that don’t Scientists collect data to answer questions When they find an answer it almost iv
always raises another question I was curious about where Martha’s Vineyard ospreys go when they leave the island each fall One question led to another and before I knew it I had been studying osprey migration for sixteen years What do you wonder about when you are out in nature This is a mostly true story Belle is a real osprey who flew across the ocean from Massachusetts to South America and spent her first winter in southern Brazil We know this from the transmitter she wore We don’t know exactly what she did on that trip so I have imagined some details the fish she caught the other animals she saw and the adventures adventures she had All my imagining is based on behaviors I have seen in other ospreys and in the other animal species that live where Belle traveled traveled I’ve also imagined the migration of her parents Their trips are based on those of adult ospreys from Martha’s Vineyard that were outfitted with transmitters We know where Belle’s mother was born because a scientist had placed a small numbered band on her leg when she was a nestling and I read the band number when we caught her a few years before we met Belle These bands were the only way we had to find out where birds migrate before satellite transmitters were invented We and many other scientists still use bands sometimes Belle continues to make her journey to the Rio Madeira each year Unlike Belle in this story the real-life Belle has not mated yet which is not unusual Ospreys sometimes mate during their first year back north but others take many years before they find a partner and first lay eggs and raise young Each year Belle has come back earlier than the year before She visits Martha’s Vineyard and Long Pond and flies across Buzzards Bay to Marion Massachusetts Someday soon we hope she will find a male osprey sky dancing with a fish in his talons and begin a family of her own So join me my good friend Dick and two kids from Martha’s Vineyard as we follow the young osprey Belle exploring her world and traveling to South America and back Rob Bierregaard v
