June 24, 2007
Osprey Banding
It's mostly quiet at the Osprey Cam nest right now. We've been seeing the occasional appearance by a bird or a pair of birds but no more mating has been spotted. It looks like the ospreys will spend the rest of their summer defending their nest and waiting for migration. We'll likely know they've migrated in August or September when we suddenly see bald eagles on the platform.
Other Osprey Nests:
As we reported on the cam page, EJ and Henry at the Loch Garten nest have now lost the last egg of their second clutch as none of the chicks were hardy enough to make it, possibly because they were not as genetically strong as the first set. Hopefully EJ and Henry will both be back next year to give it another try.
At the Connecticut Audubon Osprey Cam they have experienced the same misfortune as the North Carolina Osprey Cam, in that their cam got sprayed with whitewash. Maybe they'll get a good driving rain soon that will clear it off.
Speaking of the Connecticut cam, they had some high drama at the nest about a week ago when one of the chicks got a piece of bubble wrap looped around its neck. The bubble wrap was brought to the nest by the parents as nesting material, but the chick somehow managed to get his head tangled in it, which can be dangerous. The staff at the Audubon Center alerted the fire department, which brought out a long ladder, and then a pair of canoes and a Zodiac boat were dispatched to reach the nest and cut off the plastic. You can see a video of the rescue, taken by our friend Paula, on YouTube.
Although the chick looks distressed in the video, he was eating earlier, so he wasn't near death. Both chicks in the video were likely laying low since their mother was calling out to them to stay down with an intruder near the nest. Good work by Audubon to get out there so quickly and fix the problem.
Speaking of man-made material in osprey nests, here in the Chesapeake Bay we have a big problem with fishing line. Sometimes osprey parents bring it to the nest as nesting material because it's shiny and attracts their attention, and sometimes the line comes to the nest because it is attached to a fish, but many chicks get tangled in the line and die. (In Scotland they even had a female adult osprey get tangled in fishing line and perish, leaving her mate to take care of the chicks.) The US Fish and Wildlife Service has been trying to educate anglers to properly discard their fishing line and not leave it around or in the water. Read the USFWS flyer for more information about this important issue.
Another cam I wanted to point out is the Kentucky Osprey Cam. When you visit the site, be sure to look at some of their videos including the one showing the mother shading the young. It can get very hot during the osprey nesting season, and the best way that a mother can help her chicks is to provide shade for them by using her wings. We have seen a lot of that behavior here at Blackwater during our very hot summers.
Osprey Banding at Patuxent River Park:
During the past week, I had the great privilege to go on an osprey banding trip at Patuxent River Park in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, with a group of fellow osprey fans. The trip was led by the park naturalist, Greg Kearns, who has spent many years putting up osprey platforms and banding ospreys in order to learn more about their migration behavior. For example, over the years Greg has learned that many of his Patuxent ospreys migrate to Colombia and Venezuela.
I'm posting three banding trip videos for you to enjoy. These clips have audio, so be sure to turn up your speakers. Left-click on the Windows Media Video links below to play the clips or right-click on the links and choose "Save Target As" to download.
In the first video clip, we see Greg visiting a nest where the chicks have hatched late. These are newborns and are very small. In the video Greg points out that they have a chance at making it, although their odds will be tough since they will have very little time to master flying and fishing before migration.
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In the second video clip we see Greg pull down a chick that is about four weeks old. In the background audio you can hear chirping sounds -- that noise is the parent scolding us for being at the nest. The osprey parents would normally fly away when we came to the nest and then immediately return when we left, but while we were there they flew around us and called out in protest. Greg was careful not to have the chicks out of the nest too long and all were safely returned once they were examined or banded.
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In the final clip, you can see the oldest pair of chicks that we visited that day. These siblings were male and female, and the birds were getting close to fledging. During the video, you'll see a bird fly by in the background -- that was one of the parents. One parent took off as we approached and carried off a fish that was in the nest, so it was flying around with the fish. Protect the food! :-)
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Also notice in the clip that when Greg starts to band the chick, you can see a predator guard on the platform behind him. Greg tries to maintain these guards since they keep raccoons and snakes from climbing up into the nests to get at the chicks.
The band that Greg puts on the osprey young is a silver-colored federal government band that includes a unique identifying number and a phone number for a person to call if they find the band or see it on the bird. The band information tells biologists a lot about where ospreys are going and how long they live. If the bird's condition is reported when the band is called in, it can also tell biologists a lot about how ospreys die. If you'd like to read more about bird banding, be sure to check out the web log entry I posted in 2005 when our eaglets were banded by Craig Koppie.
Patuxent River Park has an osprey cam on one nest at the park, and it transmits images back to a beautiful TV monitor at their visitor center. Greg told us that the female at the nest had been killed, and there was one chick left at the nest that needed tending to; the only problem was that while the male adult osprey might feed a chick, it will normally not shade a chick like the mother does. So in this nest, Greg built a little tiki hut where the chick could go to cool off during the daytime hours. While we were watching the TV monitor at the visitor center, we saw that the hut was a success. After the chick was fed by the male, the young bird hustled under the cover to escape the heat. Greg reported that the shade could be 15 degrees cooler than the hot spots of the exposed nest, and so the hut was a big help to both the remaining chick and the father osprey.
I want to thank Greg not only for taking us out to band the ospreys but also for his many years of dedication to the birds and other wildlife at Patuxent River Park. If you're interested in seeing the park, be sure to visit their website. It's certainly a great place to kayak and bird watch.
Until next time,
Lisa - webmaster
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