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Project Osprey Offers Unique View of Missoula Raptors
December 19, 2011
Editor@montanaliving.com
 A mother osprey descends into her nest near Riverside Health Care Center in Missoula. The camera on the left records the happenings in the nest, and the video streams live online and in Riverside's lobby. - Photo by Todd Goodrich
Hosted by UM's Department of Geosciences, the video is online at www.umt.edu/geosciences/faculty/langner/Osprey. The Project Osprey team studies the day-to-day lives of the birds through the video, which also streams live in the lobby of the Riverside Health Care Center, just across the Clark Fork River from campus.
Heiko Langner, director of UM's Environmental Biogeochemistry Laboratory, asked last year if he could set up a camera near one of the osprey nests at Riverside to help study how mercury moves through the food chain in the greater Clark Fork River basin. The health care center gladly accepted, and the research team set up the first camera, donated by the nonprofit organization Raptors of the Rockies, near the river.
"It was a great success for our scientific purpose," Langner says.
Their studies reveal mercury is a top contaminant affecting wildlife in the Clark Fork River basin. The research shows the largest source of mercury in the watershed is Flint Creek, which enters the Clark Fork near Drummond.†
While the scientific benefits are important, the main goal of Project Osprey is public outreach. More than 1,000 kids have attended presentations by the team, and the residents at Riverside also have taken a keen interest in the birds.
In 2007 the Riverside nest was relocated from a power pole to a platform atop a freestanding pole NorthWestern Energy installed on the health care center's grounds. The new pole is dedicated to Mary Torgrimson Olson, a former resident at Riverside who was a nurse for fourteen years at UM's Curry Health Center. Her daughter, Karen Wagner, was instrumental in the relocation process.
Residents enjoy the streaming video so much that Riverside donated a new camera to improve the imagery. Raptors of the Rockies upgraded the health care center's lobby laptop to a large high-definition screen, where people watch the birds throughout the day.
But residents' interests go beyond merely viewing the birds.
"They help collect data for research," says researcher Erick Greene, a Project Osprey team member with UM's Division of Biological Sciences and Wildlife Biology Program. "They take notes on when the ospreys eat and what type of fish they bring back to the nest. They even have names for them."
Students from the Montana Natural History Center summer camp, along with a number of residents, staff, and spectators, recently watched the scientists band the leg of a six-week-old osprey chick at Riverside. With its mother nervously soaring in circles around Hellgate Canyon, those gathered got an up-close view of the chick and learned lessons no textbook could teach.
"Education is a huge part of what the project is about," Greene says.
Another webcam is set up on a nest at the Dunrovin Guest Ranch on the Bitterroot River near Lolo, and live video from both cameras can be watched online.
Project Osprey monitors nearly 200 nests throughout an area that stretches from Missoula to Butte. It is directed by Langner, Greene, and Rob Domenech, executive director of Raptor View Research Institute. |
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