Hello Everyone,
My name is Mary Ann. I am a retired university professor and administrator. Several years before leaving academia to conduct full-time research on osprey mortality, I began intensive research and writing on raptors. I live on the Canadian Prairies and am the CEO of the International Osprey Data Project along with Claudio Eduardo of Brazil.
A close encounter with a Sharp-shinned Hawk sealed my love for birds of prey. Turning outward to things with feathers that fly and the environmental impact humans have on these beautiful creatures ultimately led me to Ospreys. I am obsessed with them. My research on the survival of third hatch Ospreys and how our changing climate contributes to evolutionary changes in Ospreys, such as breeding dates, sites, and migratory routes, is in its eighth year. The study will run for twelve more years. In 2024, my friend and research associate, Heidi and I monitored more than 500 osprey eggs internationally. The mortality rate was 26.6%.
I am currently a member of the Raptor Research Foundation, the British Trust for Ornithology, the Society of Canadian Ornithologists, Birdlife International, and the American Ornithological Society.
I am a strong advocate for intervention, and an animal right’s activist. The blog attached to this information page aims to bring awareness to the challenges that birds face worldwide on a daily basis. It is my desire that through education, humans will recognize that raptors are sentient beings and they will mitigate their actions in order to create a better environment for wildlife. I believe that humans must live peacefully and in harmony with all beings – keep nature close, treat it with love, respect, and awe.
Besides the long-term Osprey mortality project, I am working on a two children’s books, which have been delayed due to my life partner’s diagnosis with Lewy Body Dementia in 2023. We actively care for the feral cats in our neighbourhood as well as the squirrels and birds that come to our garden for food. We live with four rescue cats – Missey a Norwegian Forest Cat, Calico and Baby Hope, and Hugh Yugo a Ginger female.
INTERNATIONAL OSPREY DATA PROJECT
The International Osprey Data Project is a long-term research project of Dr Mary Ann Steggles and Claudio Eduardo. Along with a dedicated research associate, Heidi, several Citizen Scientists assist us with the collection of our data. It is through the generosity of everyone – from streaming cam owners to individuals who make casual observations in my comments – that help us establish avian behaviour on the nests.
There has yet to be any significant research on siblicide in Western and Eastern Ospreys. This project aims to establish a more accurate percentage of siblicide compared with fledges at the nests. Through careful observation, the researchers hope to establish why osplets died. Is this strictly due to a lack of fish ? Or might there be other mitigating causes such as weather or commercial fishing? In addition, information is gathered on the number of chicks hatched, fledged, and predated.
The project began in 2018 and will run for at least twenty years. Initially, only a small number of nests were observed. This has expanded to include more than five times that number due to the use of a project template. The data will be analysed at the end of each breeding season, and the results will be published. We hope to understand better Ospreys’ challenges in the 21st century and what drives the siblings to kill one another in the nest.
Earlier career: Dr Steggles won many awards for her teaching in both art history and ceramics including the coveted Olive Beatrice Stanton Award for Teaching Excellence at the University of Manitoba where she was the Associate Director and Acting Director of the School of Art from 2006-2016. She was an energetic young researcher and became an international expert in the history of British sculpture and particularly that exported to the Indian subcontinent. That research is included in Statues of the Raj (2001) and a book co-edited with Richard Barnes, British Sculpture in India. New Views and Old Memories (2011). She has lectured extensively on the topic with articles and book chapters including Marg, Chowkidar, History Today, Asian Studies Journal. “No Falling Statues. India’s Response to the Black Lives Matter Movement” in M. Trusted, J. Barnes, and M. Stocker, (Eds.), Toppling Statues. The Black Lives Matter Movement. Norwich. Frontier Publishing (2021).
Dr. Steggles research in the field of ceramics crossed the boundaries of contemporary practice and the environment. She was an Interdisciplinary Artist in Residence at Hospitalfield House, Arbroath, Scotland where she explored the theme of transience alongside locating ceramics within current environmental concerns. This singular event changed Dr Steggles focus and she became an outspoken critic of the traditional methods of teaching ceramics and the practice itself. Her research into the impact of ceramics formed the basis of several book chapters including “Manitoba Hydro’s Mega-Dams and the Ethical Teaching of Ceramics” in The City is an Ecosystem. Sustainable Education, Policy, and Practice (Routledge, 2022); “Can Ceramics Ever Be a Sustainable Practice” in White, A. & French, E. (Eds.), Making Eco (Logical). Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier Press (forthcoming); “Imaging the Climate Crisis: The Ceramics of Ayumi Horie, Julia Galloway, Amy Snider and Julianna Zwierciadlowska-Rhymer” in Nail, S. & Manfredi, C. (Eds.), Understanding, acknowledging, representing environmental emergency. University of Nantes: E-REA Special Issue.
During her time at Hospitalfield House, Dr Steggles connected with nature in a way that profoundly moved her away from public monuments and ceramics and towards a concern for the environment – a fact that underpins her study of raptors today. She constantly insists that humans have irreparably harmed our planet, making it difficult for our wildlife, particularly our feathered friends, to survive our debacle. Her goal is to help each of us understand our impact and to create a better environment in which her ‘beautiful feathered friends’ can survive.
Dr Steggles will tell you that she has been ‘fortunate’. She has been able to travel, staying for extended periods in various parts of Asia and Western Europe. She dreams of sitting on top of a mountain in Cuba, near Manzanillo, looking up at hundreds and hundreds of ospreys as they migrate from North to South America in September.
You can contact Dr Steggles through the form on the home page or by writing her directly at her e-mail: maryannsteggles@icloud.com She loves to hear from her readers!