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, 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 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 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. 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

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Excerpted from Belle's Journey: An Osprey Takes Flight by Rob Bierregaard
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