Bird in hand
Bird in hand:
Planning to protect what is close to you
WRITTEN BY JON MACNEILL, COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER
Birders often go to great lengths for the satisfaction of a new sighting. Sometimes, as was the case for sisters Tracey Dean and Joanne Dewey, that can even include going at great speeds.
“She and I went on a birding trip down south and of course the speed limit was much higher down there. Tracey would joke, ‘we’re learning how to bird at 70 miles an hour!’" Joanne recalls with a chuckle one recent afternoon.
While that trip generated a good story and a first-ever sighting—a whooping crane, one of only two cranes native to North America—Joanne says the experience still wouldn’t go down as a highlight of her sister’s birding career.
Instead, it was the quiet, peaceful moments with nature that truly moved Tracey.
“Little things excited her,” Joanne says. “She loved having the chickadees using her nestboxes so she could watch them. She realized how sneaky they were at getting in and out, because often they would have babies before she even realized they were in the boxes.
“So, yes, we went to Texas, and yes, she saw whooping cranes way off in the distance. She could go ‘tick’ and mark that off her list. But that didn’t mean as much to her.
“She liked the up close and personal interaction with nature.”
Joanne recently spoke with the Nature Trust to share stories about her sister and fellow birding enthusiast, Tracey Dean, who passed away in May 2021 at age 60.
A familiar name in Charlotte County’s conservation community, there are many ways that Tracey left behind a legacy of love for nature.
As the education director at the Huntsman Marine Science Centre, she’d inspired countless students around the wonders of the ocean, kickstarting careers in marine biology and sparking lifelong fascination with the marine environment.
As a master bird bander, she founded the migratory monitoring station in St. Andrews, which would become the only station in the province, and helped train and establish banding clubs in Ontario.
Tracey at the Point Lepreau Bird Observatory, New Brunswick, CA
And as she got older, she wanted as many New Brunswickers as possible to have their own up close and personal experiences with nature, generously leaving in her will a portion of her estate to the Nature Trust of New Brunswick.
“Preserving the land was very important to Tracey,” Joanne says. “She recognized early that maybe she could not help internationally, but she could help locally. She wanted to protect land in New Brunswick for future generations.”
Tracey and sister Joanne on a trip in Vietnam.
Tracey and Joanne came by their love of nature honestly. The children of geologists spent every summer on geological expeditions in search of Ordovician trilobite fossils with their parents, spending weeks at isolated camps from Turkey to the southern tip of France to the Rockies.
“Geology is interesting for geologists,” Joanne says with a chuckle, “but it isn’t always interesting 24/7 for kids.”
So, naturally, her and her sister’s attention would turn to the birds, flowers and “the things that moved and weren’t just dead and rocks,” Joanne laughs.
For Tracey, it was the birds that really caught her eye.
When the family moved to Ottawa in the late 60s, the sisters joined the Macoun Field Club, the junior branch of the Ottawa Field Naturalists, where their passion and skills for identifying plants and birds really flourished.
Some 10 years later, Tracey learned to bird band, sparking a lifelong labour of love.
Banding involves carefully catching birds using methods like mist nets, then placing a small, uniquely numbered band around the bird's leg. This allows researchers to gather critical data about the bird's species, age, health, and migration patterns. Once banded and recorded, the birds are released unharmed so researchers can monitor and study them over time.
“She adored being up close and personal with the birds,” Joanne recalls. “When you’ve got a bird in hand, it can tell you so much more about how it’s doing.
Tracey, left, preparing to go on one of her iconic ‘owling’ nights, to band saw-whet owls, one of the smallest owl species in North America, in the woods near her home in Charlotte County.
“And it really is phenomenal how some of these birds, they come back the next summer and they aren’t just caught in the same general area—they’re caught in the exact same net line that they were caught the previous year and the year before that.”
At Huntsman, Joanne says Tracey built a reputation as someone who was serious about their work but never lost sight of why they did it: helping people, especially young people, learn about and fall in love with nature, from her feathered friends in the air to the gentle finned giants of the Bay of Fundy.
“She was always looking for ways to improve her program and better connect with the kids and make it more real for them,” Joanne says.
“She was a stickler for some things, especially punctuality and making sure that people treated the animals correctly. But she was loving and bubbly in her own way. So many people remember her for her smiles and giggles.”
And for the lasting impact she made on their lives. That's especially true for the students who came through her educational programmes at Huntsman or who joined her on field trips out on the water.
As one educator wrote of Tracey upon her passing: “All those years bringing my students, [Tracey] always knew how to make the ocean world an extraordinary learning experience. I am sure that [Tracey’s] spirit will live on for a long, long time, with all those young people, and up in the sky, alongside the shearwaters, the puffins and the joyful little gannets.”
“Someone told me she was just like a kid out there on the water,” Joanne recalls. “When someone is that happy and that excited, it’s infectious in and of itself. She was a star out there.”
But, Joanne says, Tracey was also an introvert, and after long days inspiring students, she craved quiet time, at home or in the calmness of nature, to recharge. That’s how she became familiar with the Nature Trust.
Living in the St. Andrews area, Tracey would often visit Sam Orr’s Pond at the Caughey-Taylor Nature Preserve for some tranquil moments.
Every year she would also load her little red kayak and venture up the Wolastoq (St. John River) to take in the more deciduous forests in the central and northern parts of the province.
“She was always on the lookout for preserves and for nature trails. She never ever wanted to be stuck inside for any length of time,” Joanne says. “She said she always thought best when she was walking in nature. She’d say, ‘I can’t sit in my office and think up these things. But if I go for a walk and I’m outside, then ideas keep coming to me.’”
Joanne says it would mean so much to her sister to know that the gift she left the Nature Trust in her estate will help create new preserves and give more New Brunswickers the chance to have their own special, quiet moments with the outdoors.
“She would be thrilled,” Joanne says. “She’d be just so excited and happy that she managed to make a little difference. She loved to travel, but she knew that the best way to help was locally, so if something in her neck of the woods would be preserved because of her help, she would just be over the moon.”
Are you interested in learning about planned giving options and the Nature Trust? Click here.