I have always loved the outdoors and became very interested in raptors many years ago. I remember vividly the first time I ever saw an Osprey.  As I was doing some late spring cross country skiing in central Idaho, a large bird flew over the Salmon River and a companion identified it as an Osprey. Several  years later,  I was searching for Eagles in Montana, and many people directed me to the north end of Flathead Lake. Most of the large raptors there, however, were Ospreys not Eagles! As I was watching these magnificent birds, I followed one up a river and watched as he plummeted feet first  into the water right in front of my eyes, completely submerging and coming out with a large trout, getting lift off out of the water and heading to a perch to eat. It took my breath away and stirred something deep in my heart. The addiction had begun!

When I returned to Minnesota , after years of living out west, I volunteered on the Osprey Reintroduction Project at Hennepin Parks in 1994. My degree in art had made me very visually aware and I seemed to notice things about these birds that other volunteers did not. As a result, I was hired as the hack site attendant on the reintroduction in 1995. ( At that time the project was a joint effort between Hennepin Parks and The Raptor Center and I was hired by TRC.) I was offered an opportunity  to try to fist train a captive, permanently disabled Osprey at The Raptor Center the same year, something that had never been done  there before.  Ospreys are known for being difficult to keep alive in captivity and they are not as easily trained as some other raptors.  But I bonded with the pair of Ospreys there, Stan and Ollie, and had great success training them to eat on my fist and to tolerate being around large groups of people for education purposes. I received a Special Achievement award from TRC for that work  in 1996. Sadly, Stan got a severe case of bumblefoot  and had to be euthanized, but I continued to work with Ollie for four years. I  worked as  wildlife Technician at Three Rivers Park District ( formerly named Hennepin Parks) from 1997-2008, with my primary duties being  The Osprey Project ( monitoring all nests in 8 counties, supervising volunteers, banding chicks and writing annual reports).  In 1998 I traveled to Michigan to serve as a consultant on their Osprey reintroduction project and I met the well known Osprey researcher, Sergej Postupalsky.  We were kindred spirits and have remained in touch ever since, sharing our observations, discussing  research methods , terminology, outcomes and sharing our annual reports every year. He has been a great source of inspiration  for me. (He has been studying Ospreys in Michigan for 50 years!) It was through these conversations that he encouraged me to write a paper about my  field work which had revealed many interesting behaviors which had not been documented previously in this population.  This culminated in the paper “Two-Year-Old Nesting Behavior and Extra Pair Copulation in a Reintroduced Osprey Population”, Journal of Raptor Research, Volume 42, Number 2, June 2008 ( co-authored with Judy Englund). The following year another paper was published “Migration routes, reproduction and lifespan of a translocated Osprey”, Wilson Journal of Ornithology, volume 121, Number 1, March 2009 (co-authored with Sergej Postupalsky and William Stout). In 2008 I had to leave  the park district, for many complicated reasons, and I created the Metro Osprey Watch program to continue monitoring all nests and pursue the research on Osprey behaviors.  I have many topics I am researching including productivity, extra pair copulation and mate fidelity, nest site fidelity and movement among nests, age of first breeding,  population expansion etc…