Paper is a feather in young birder's cap

Studied finch nesting on glacier

Spencer Hardy, 14, helped his father, Douglas, publish the first well-documented case in the world of a species other than penguins successfully nesting on ice. (Alden Pellett/Associated Press)

NORWICH, Vt. - The lead author of an article about finches nesting on a Peruvian glacier in a scholarly bird journal is affiliated with the Geosciences Department at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

The other is affiliated with the Marion W. Cross School.

The citation in the quarterly Wilson Journal of Ornithology omits the word "elementary" from the name of the Norwich school.

Nor does it mention that it was the curiosity of 12-year-old Spencer Hardy that led him and his father, Douglas, to recognize the significance of the white-winged diuca finch nesting on the ice of a glacier.

But to the ornithological world, Spencer's age is irrelevant to the phenomenon he helped document on a high-altitude ice field, in a mountain range he has never visited, thousands of miles from his Vermont home: It is the first well-documented case in the world of a species other than penguins successfully nesting on ice.

"It gives you some idea of the adaptations that birds have undergone to utilize all spaces, all the niches that are out there, from living in Death Valley to living at 18,000 feet in the Andes in Peru," said Clait Braun of Tucson, editor of the Wilson Journal, which published the Hardys's paper in September.

It wasn't until Braun was finishing the paper with the Hardys and he asked for Spencer's academic pedigree that he found out the boy's age. "I was pretty well stunned," said Braun.

"We don't get very many papers from people like that," he said. He said most authors are graduate students or even older birders.

The journal was founded more than a century ago by young bird enthusiasts, Braun said. But by young, Braun meant men in their late teens and early 20s.

Spencer - who has been interested in birds since he stared at flocks from his high chair - is now 14 and a ninth grader at Hanover (N.H.) High School. The birding is done outside school.

He seems unfazed by the attention his birding skills are bringing him.

"It's a neat experience. I don't have anything to compare it against," Spencer said. "Hopefully, it will be one of many to come."

His fascination with birds evolved into real-life study. At 6 or 7, he was working with established birders on local bird counts and breeding surveys.

Since he couldn't drive, his parents had to take him where he needed to go, getting them involved, too.

His father, a UMass research scientist, started visiting the Quelccaya Ice Cap in Peru in 2003 as part of his work to help get a long-term climate history through dust trapped over the centuries in the ice at about 18,000 feet above sea level.

It was Spencer's fascination with birds that led the elder Hardy to take pictures of every bird he saw in Peru.

After Douglas Hardy came home, Spencer would pore over the photos and use bird books to identify the species.

It was during that process that Douglas Hardy started noticing the nests on the ice. So the Hardys shared their findings with neighbor George Clark, a retired biologist from the University of Connecticut who has helped groom the young ornithologist.

Then they had to figure out which species made the nests.

"We got it down to two species, mainly from the size [of the nests] and what was around and abundant in the area," Spencer said.

A feather expert at the Smithsonian Institution made the link to the finches.

"The discovery of this is really kind of a new frontier," said Clark. "Physically, we think much of the globe has been covered. . . . This is an area that people just haven't visited."

Two years ago, Hardy queried the Wilson Journal about a paper on the ice birds. He didn't make an effort to list Spencer as a coauthor until after he spoke with professional birders, who persuaded him that given Spencer's level of input, he merited a coauthor tag.

"My first step was to go to the editor and say, 'I want to be totally honest with you, he's my son, I can't see objectively about this,' " Hardy said.

But Braun said the science - and Spencer's contribution to it - was sound.

"It's just not the casual person who can pick this stuff up and turn it into scientific prose," Braun said. "Spencer deserves a lot of credit to get his dad to get more information and then helping his dad get it turned into a scientific paper."

When the paper was finalized there was some discussion about which of Spencer's schools should be listed. They chose the school he attended when the journal first accepted the paper, the Norwich elementary school.

Spencer's birding is done outside his school, but he said his future, without a doubt, includes the formal study of ornithology.