Osprey Chick Resurfaces 8 Years Later in Helena: A male osprey, born along the Clark Fork River near Drummond in 2015, has defied some long-shot odds.
When just a chick, the fish hawk was banded with the number #1088-07323 by Robert Domenech. Domenech is the executive director of the Raptor View Research Institute.
The banding was part of an ongoing study. The study started in 2010, by Domenech and other researchers from the University of Montana looking into the effect of mine-related heavy metal pollution affecting osprey populations.
To date, the researchers have accessed about 40 nests. They’ve drawn blood samples (for heavy metal analysis.) They banded 330 nestlings making this project one of the largest and most comprehensive of its kind.
Results are troubling, with many nestlings showing mercury levels 100 times higher than what would be considered toxic in humans. In humans high mercury levels can cause everything from headaches to kidney damage. Osprey in the Drummond area show the highest mercury levels of birds in the study.
Researchers don’t know for sure how much mercury an osprey can handle. Nobody ever tracked chicks that grew up in high-mercury environments. This study aims to help fill in the gap by banding the osprey chicks and studying their movements. In addition, as monitoring nests along the Clark Fork River.
Fast forward:
Eight years after that one osprey chick was banded, and 60 miles to the east, an osprey nesting on a cellular tower along Spring Meadow Lake State Park in Helena got its picture taken by Kurt Cunningham, a retired education specialist for Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks.
Cunningham didn’t realize the fish hawk was banded until he edited the photos.
“It was an exciting discovery, but even though the photograph clearly showed a silver band attached to the raptor’s right leg, the image wasn’t clear enough to read the identifying band numbers,” he said.
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