Osprey Cam Web Log 2007

Nest Update & Other Cams

We wanted to give a general update on our osprey nest. We've been seeing the occasional photo showing our couple mating, which is a good sign. Also the ospreys have been adding a few sticks to the nest and have been eating some meals there, so it's clear they haven't given up on nesting season. For now, we're just watching and waiting for another egg or two. At this point there's no reason to think that the ospreys will go without a family this year.

And in case you missed my posting on the cam page, here is a photo that Tom Lorsung captured on the day I took the videos showing our three ospreys fighting over the cam platform. This was the day we lost the one egg. Thanks to Tom for this interesting shot.

Other Osprey Nests:

To make our cam watchers feel a little better, I can say that we're not the only osprey nest having high drama this year. Our friend Russ Yeaton, who follows an osprey nest at Spring Point, in South Portland, Maine, reports that he has seen five ospreys vying for his nest; that makes the fighting here between our three ospreys seem tame in comparison. Here are two photos from Russ showing some of the action -- photo 1 and photo 2.

And at the famous osprey nest at Loch Garten in Scotland there is high drama again with the resident pair of Henry and EJ. For those of you who have not followed the Loch Garten nest, the action there often reads like an osprey soap opera. The root of the problem is that Henry often returns late from migration. Since he's late showing up, his normal mate EJ sometimes hooks up with a competing male called Orange VS. In 2005 this extramarital mating happened, and Henry returned to find eggs in the nest, so knowing they were not his, he promptly kicked them out. This year they had the same thing happen again. Henry showed up late a few days ago and found two eggs in the nest, which he kicked right out. Then EJ performed a minor miracle and today laid two eggs in two hours. Was Henry impressed with this amazing feat even though they were not likely his? Not at all. After EJ went to eat, Henry tossed out the two new eggs as well. In total, Henry has dumped eight eggs onto the ground. And so the folks at Loch Garten are left waiting to see if EJ can produce some new eggs now -- this time with the ever-colorful Henry.

I also wanted to point out some other interesting osprey cams that are seeing egg action at this time. Below are several cams worth checking out:

Dennis Puleston Osprey Cam, NY
Connecticut Audubon Osprey Cam
Woods Hole, MA Osprey Cam
Kentucky Osprey Cam
Wilmington, NC Osprey Cam

The Connecticut nest -- where they have four eggs now -- is another locale with a quirky pair. Last year, the pair on this nest brought in a very blue teddy bear that stayed there for all of the nesting season. This year the bear was gone, so the pair went out and brought in pieces of plastic or cloth that were nearly identical to the color of the bear. Someone needs to do a study on why these ospreys love this color so much. :-)

Other Birds:

I also wanted to share a couple other bird items that cam watchers have recently sent me. First, cam watcher Diane Morris sent me this beautiful photo that she took of baby cardinals near her house. This photo was taken in Tallahassee, Florida, on April 22. Much thanks to Diane for sharing a scene that we don't often get to witness.

Also, our refuge photographer Bob Quinn recently captured an amazing sequence of shots showing a Great blue heron catching and eating a large fish (likely a carp) at the Refuge. The fish put up a battle and almost got away. I turned Bob's shots into a movie, which you can see here. Just left-click on the link below to play or right-click and choose "Save Target As" to download:

3.5 MB

Also, if you didn't see my earlier post, be sure to see Bob's new shots from the Pickering Creek Audubon Center on the Eastern Shore in his Gallery. Much thanks to Bob again for sharing his wonderful work with us.

Until next time,
Lisa - webmaster
(contact)

Osprey Battles & the Lost Egg

First, I wanted to apologize for the fact that our website was unavailable on Friday evening and early Sunday morning. On Friday afternoon, our web host installed a major security upgrade on their web server that took us offline for almost four hours (without warning) and then they had a server looping problem on Sunday morning that took us briefly offline. We're sorry for this as these episodes are just as frustrating for us as they are for our cam watchers, and we hope the server issues are now fixed.

As a reminder to our new cam watchers, whenever the Friends website is unavailable, you can still catch our cams at WildCam.com. If you registered for the recent contest, just sign in with that info and you can watch both the Eagle Cam and Osprey Cam from their site. If the problem is with the cameras themselves, it won't help to go there since they get their cam feed directly from us, but if it's strictly a website accessibility problem, you can likely see the cams there.

Osprey Battles & the Lost Egg

Well, it appears we now have some insight into the mysterious behavior of our osprey couple. If you didn't see my last web log post where I talked about the confusing behavior of our couple, be sure to read that, but we now think we know what is happening. It appears that a second female is showing aggressive interest in the platform nest. We've been seeing images that show a female with a darker necklace (chest coloring) on the nest at times, and her presence is causing enough havoc that our couple cannot get down to the business of raising a family.

The action started around the middle of last week when we noticed that we weren't seeing two birds on the nest even though egg-laying time was near. Then when a second bird finally showed up at the end of the week, the two birds were not interacting -- just kind of staring at each other. On Friday night (when our website went down) an egg was laid in the nest, but very little incubating was done throughout the cold night, and on Saturday the egg largely sat alone in the nest while the three adults were fighting with each other about who should be a couple and who should be on the nest.

This dynamic is not new in the osprey world. At the famous osprey nest in Loch Garten, Scotland they had a strange female attack EJ and Henry -- the established osprey pair. Often when the resident female EJ was attacked, she would disappear for long periods -- just as our female was doing. Biologists speculated that the strange female could have been a bird that was ready to lay eggs but lacked a nest in which to lay them.

This is not too dissimilar from our story of the eagles George and Martha at our local Woodrow Wilson Bridge near Washington, DC, where a female attacked Martha and tried to dislodge her from the nest. The invading female needed a mate and a nest, and wanted what Martha already had.

On Saturday, both Bob Quinn and I were at Blackwater Refuge and observed the battle going on between the ospreys at the cam platform. In Bob's photos you can see one female catching a fish, going to the nest with it and chasing the other female away, only to have that female come right back to chase off the fish-carrying female. They both landed in the marsh, where they sat glaring at each other. [Note: Bob has some additional photos after that showing a water platform nest -- that's a different osprey nest than the cam platform.]

In my video clip, I saw the male get involved in the fight as well. A female was on the nest and the second bird came in to chase her off. When both landed together on the nest, the third bird dove in to chase off the intruder, and all three flew off together. Then the intruder landed again on the nest, only to have another bird dive at her. Left-click on the WMV movie link below or right-click and choose "Save Target As" to download to your computer:

Osprey Battle (3.8MB)

During all this action, the egg was sadly forgotten in the nest. We're not sure whose egg it was (meaning which female) and we doubt it could have hatched since they left it uncovered for so long, but still it was unfortunate to see the crows discover it during the many times when the ospreys were off fighting with one another. It didn't take long for the crows to break the egg and eat the contents. They left some of the shell in the nest and took the rest, but eventually most of the shell disappeared.

We honestly have no idea what will happen now. In Loch Garten, the osprey couple was able to finally drive off the invading female, after which they laid a full clutch of new eggs, but I'm not sure if we'll get that lucky. At this point we would be very happy to see one couple get to the point where they can produce an egg or two in peace and salvage some of their nesting season. But we'll just have to wait and see what develops.

In the 2005 Osprey Cam season, we had a late egg-laying couple and they laid eggs on 4/28, 5/1, and 5/4. The last two eggs did hatch and the chicks fledged successfully (although rather late), so we do have a few more weeks for the ospreys to finish off their fighting and still have time to lay eggs. Here's hoping they do.

Until next time,
Lisa - webmaster
(contact)

Ospreys and Eagles

I wanted to spend a little time talking about the last few days on the osprey nest, because the osprey action we’ve been seeing has been a little confusing.

Up until a few days ago, our ospreys were doing great. They were mating, nest building, eating together, and defending the nest together. Then a few days ago, we started seeing only one bird on the nest. I thought we were seeing both the female and male at different times, but now I’m not so sure. What makes it hard to tell is that our female has a very light necklace (chest coloring), and size is the only other indication we have of gender, but size is not always helpful unless the male is there for a comparison.

In the last two days, we continued to see only one bird on the nest for most of the time, and it appeared to be the male. Then on Wednesday, while the lone adult was away, a bird (likely a crow that had been visiting the nest) quickly flew in and stole the remaining sod ball (or marsh root ball), which the ospreys had collected for the nest. As soon as the clump disappeared, the adult osprey came back to scold the thief, but the event was odd because if the adults had been properly tending the nest, the theft shouldn’t have happened.

On Thursday morning, we finally saw two birds in the nest again, but we’re not sure if they are our couple. The second bird looks almost like a male in size and has had no real interaction with our other bird. Instead they spend a lot of time standing one in front of the other, as if watching to see what the other will do. Normally a male osprey would not let another male hang out at his nest, so it seems odd that this would happen if both birds are male -- but we don't know for sure that they are.

We expected egg laying to possibly start this week, but it’s hard to lay eggs when you’re rarely together or when you're both male. :-)

Our cam technician -- who has an osprey nest near his house -- says his birds have also seemingly lost interest in nesting lately, as if they’ve slowed down their preparations a bit, possibly because of the unusual snow and cold we had about a week ago. We're not sure if weather is playing a part in this odd behavior -- causing the birds to delay egg laying -- but we hope so, because the weather will improve.

We’ve asked the folks at the Visitor Center to keep an eye on the monitor to see if any mating is occuring. Also, I plan to visit the Refuge this weekend to tape some new video of the eaglets, and I’ll check out the platform and osprey monitor while I’m there. But right now, we’re just watching to see what's going on with the ospreys that are showing up at the nest.

Ospreys and Eagles

In this web log entry, I wanted to talk about the relationship that our resident eagles have with our resident ospreys, especially since Blackwater Refuge has a healthy population of both species of raptor. Eagles and ospreys have an adversarial relationship, and the eagles normally get the upper hand in any battles, due to their larger size. In this wonderful photo, you can see very clearly how much larger the bald eagle is when compared to the smaller osprey and why the eagle can often dominate mid-air confrontations.

Bald eagles are notorious for stealing fish from ospreys. In fact, this was one of the reasons why founding father Benjamin Franklin did not want the bald eagle to be America’s national symbol. Franklin thought the eagle was lazy because it would wait for the osprey to catch a fish, then harass the osprey in mid-air until the smaller raptor dropped its prize.

Biologists are not quite as critical of the eagle for this behavior because they see this as normal, since the eagle is just making the most of the fact that ospreys are excellent fishermen and the eagles have a size advantage over them. But I’m sure the ospreys would side with Ben Franklin in this debate. :-)

It should be noted that ospreys are not totally helpless. Sometimes they will work hard to keep the fish away from the eagle, forcing the eagle to fly under the osprey and then roll on its back and grab for the fish with its talons while beneath the osprey. Also, sometimes osprey couples will team up to protect their food from the eagles. Tom Miller, the ranger at Blackwater Refuge, saw an osprey fly toward an eagle to intercept it while the other osprey quickly flew to the home nest with the fish.

Ospreys can be even more aggressive if they are protecting their nests or young from eagles. At Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge in Florida, local photographer Bob Montanaro just captured this type of event on film as he watched a group of four ospreys drive off a group of immature bald eagles that were flying too close to the osprey nests. Be sure to view these amazing photos where you can see the osprey aggressively flying at the immature eagle and making it clear that the ospreys will not tolerate the eagles in their territory.

And this brings up the second danger that eagles represent -- sometimes eagles will attempt to take osprey nestlings, and there are even reports of adult osprey remains being found in eagle nests. Biologists are not sure if the adult ospreys were dead when the eagles found them or if they were the result of a kill, but there is no doubt that ospreys do not want eagles hanging out near their nests.

When you’re watching our Osprey Cam, you will sometimes see the ospreys looking to their right (your left on the cam) and calling out. There are snags and trees in that direction where bald eagles like to perch. Just the fact that eagles are perching there can be enough to get the ospreys upset.

And just a side note in case anyone is wondering: Having eagles there would not deter the ospreys from nesting at the cam platform. Eagles are all over the Refuge, and ospreys have to learn to live with them if they are going to raise young near the Blackwater River.

During the 2005 Osprey Cam season, we had a chance to witness how the ospreys deal with pesky eagles. That season we saw the mother osprey leave her nestlings at the cam platform and fly off to those trees where she proceeded to dive-bomb a perching eagle.

Normally the father osprey would do this type of work when the mother is protecting young birds, but that was the season we had our delinquent father, and since he would often disappear for most of the day, the mother had to do a lot of this work herself.

Below are two videos of this event -- one showing the eagle flying into the trees and the other showing the mother consequently dive-bombing the eagle. In this instance, the mother did a good job of sending a strong message to the eagle, but it was somewhat risky for her to have to leave the chicks alone to do this. Left-click on the Windows Media Video file links below to play, or right-click on the links and choose "Save Target As" to download to your computer:

Eagle Flyby (3.5MB)

Osprey Dive-bombing (2.5MB)

We love our eagles at Blackwater Refuge, but it’s important to remember that they’re predators by nature, and sometimes their prey can be the other animals that we enjoy at the Refuge.

Until next time,
Lisa - webmaster
(contact)

Welcome to a New Season!

We want to welcome everyone to another season with our Blackwater Refuge ospreys!

For those who are new to our Osprey Cam, this is our seventh year watching the ospreys on our live web cam from the Refuge. Altogether we've watched 12 chicks hatch and fledge since 2001.

Because ospreys eat fresh fish almost exclusively, our ospreys must migrate from Blackwater Refuge in September, which is when it starts to turn cool. Once the ospreys return from South America (or Central America or Florida) in March, they almost immediately begin rebuilding their nest. Ospreys are very loyal to their nest sites and are believed to mate for life, so if both adults survive migration season, then it's likely they will return to the same nest year after year.

When cam watchers ask us if this is the same osprey pair as last year, it's not an easy question to answer since we've had a bit of a soap opera on our osprey platform.

For the first four years that we were on the Internet, we had what appeared to be the same reliable osprey couple at the nest, and then in the fifth year, that couple suddenly left the cam platform not long after returning north and took up residence at a nearby water platform.

Later we heard that our couple had returned to an old nest of theirs that had been taken down but was now restored. It seemed the couple remembered their old residence and made the move. After they did this, several different osprey couples battled over our cam platform, and the couple that won the fight spent the rest of the 2005 season on the cam nest. That pair went on to produce two fledglings, which we named Thunder and Lightning, since the family sat through a lot of turbulent weather that summer. But this new couple -- mainly the father -- was not nearly as skilled as our old couple, and they struggled to get both nestlings to fledging age.

We later heard that our former couple did not do well at their old water nest and did not produce any young that year -- possibly because of the sudden move to a different nest -- and so in 2006 we believe that our old couple returned to the cam platform where last year they hatched and fledged an amazing four chicks -- a Blackwater Refuge record! Quite a few of us at the Refuge honestly did not expect the fourth chick to make it, but the parents did a fantastic job in feeding all the chicks, and all were healthy when they fledged. We were convinced this must be our former, highly-competent couple.

As for the 2007 season, we don't know for sure if this is our couple from last year, although the mother has a necklace that is light in color like last year's mother. Necklaces are brown patterns that appear across the female's chest that indicate her sex. In North America, the necklace is normally a reliable indication of an adult female, as is the larger size of the female (about a third larger than the male). Unfortunately, since our female has a light necklace, many times it's hard to recognize her.

The Osprey Cam Location

Several cam watchers have asked about the location of the Osprey Cam. The birds are on a tall land platform that we built specifically for them. Behind them is a water impoundment area where the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service can control the amount of rainwater that collects -- that is the water you see in the background. In front of the platform is the Blackwater River -- where our ospreys and eagles get many of their meals. At ground level, the platform is near a small pond area where herons, ducks and turtles hang out. Sometimes you see the ospreys looking down at them.

Below are two photos that were taken near the Osprey Cam platform. The first photo shows the Wildlife Drive. On the right is the pond near the platform and on the left is the Blackwater River. In the second photo is a beautiful sunset shot showing the Blackwater River near the cam platform sunrise shot showing the local Blackwater wetlands. Much thanks to photographer Sid Keiser for loaning us these amazing photos. Click on the thumbnails for larger versions:

Visitors to our Wildlife Drive at the Refuge can drive right by the Osprey Cam platform and see the ospreys, which are just off the road. Fortunately, ospreys are more flexible about nesting near people than bald eagles are, and the ospreys don't seem to mind hikers, cyclists, and cars going by their platform all day. There is a service road that leads to the platform -- this road is for employees only and we use it to reach the nest when it requires maintenance.

The platform is very high, and we have to rent a bucket truck from a local company before we can go up, so acquiring it is a big deal and we usually reserve that for emergencies with the cam equipment.

If you have more questions about the Osprey Cam, you might want to read our Osprey Cam Q&A page.

The New Cam Position

I know quite a few cam watchers are not thrilled about our new view, which came about when we recently installed a new camera and camera arm. Many cam watchers have said they miss seeing the sky and general surrounding area. Our cam technician has said that the next time he goes up to perform maintenance (after the chicks are old enough to be alone in the nest) he will try to adjust the cam so we can see the sky again.

In the meantime, one of the bonuses of the new cam position is that the cam is now a little farther from the platform. For those who were with us last year, you can appreciate what this means. Last year we had six ospreys in the nest at times and the poop was flying like rain. No sooner would we go up to clean the cam lens, then the ospreys would hit it again. One cam watcher joked that the chicks were doing it intentionally and were high-fiving each other with their wing tips every time they hit it. So this year, the cam is now farther away, and that might mean that we will be spared some of the very messy views that we had to put up with last year.

Also, I got quite a few emails today asking about the "brown things" in the nest. Those are clumps of sod that the ospreys bring in to line the inner nest. They also sometimes use them to cover the eggs once they arrive. If you remember back to the fall and spring -- when we saw grass growing in the platform bottom -- the sod is what produces the grass.

As for the eggs, last year we had our first egg on April 11, so we are getting close. A good indication of possible egg-laying activity is if we see the female actually sitting down in the nest all night long. This usually means she expects an egg very soon.

We thank everyone for joining us for another year with our very entertaining ospreys. And best of luck to the osprey family.

Until next time,
Lisa - webmaster
(contact)