First, I wanted to thank all those who might have been checking our website to see if the Osprey Cam was back up. We’re having a large amount of work done on the Wildlife Drive (which runs near our Osprey Cam) and also along a water impoundment area that is near the base of the cam. This work is required to keep the local rivers from overtaking the road and other visitor areas, so it’s necessary work, although we wish it would move along faster.

I spoke with our ranger this morning about the work near the Osprey Cam, and he said the only thing that remains to be done near the cam is putting the Osprey Cam equipment back into place so we can get the cam up. It will take a few days to do this since some of the equipment is heavy (like the solar panel) and requires a couple people to do the work, but at least it looks like the road work around the cam is done and we’re almost ready to go live.

Our ranger said that this morning he saw eagles on the Osprey Cam platform, so it’s possible our osprey parents have begun migration. Normally if an osprey couple has chicks, the mother will leave for migration first around late August, then the father will stay until his young are ready to leave (usually in September). Then once the young birds strike out for South or Central America, the father osprey will leave too. All the family members will migrate separately, although the young siblings might start out together.

Since our 2008 osprey couple did not have chicks this year, it’s likely they will both leave early, since the male does not have any chicks he has to watch over and help feed. So when our cam comes back online, our birds might be already gone.

But regardless of whether our ospreys are still at the cam or not, the fact is migration season has begun. As I write this, Hawk Mountain in Pennsylvania is reporting that they’ve already seen 28 ospreys migrate overhead since August 6. Be sure to visit the Hawk Mountain website to keep tabs on the numbers during their annual Autumn Hawk Watch.

Also, several websites are tracking young ospreys on their first migration. You can visit the Nethy and Deshar website to follow the two osprey fledglings from the famous Loch Garten osprey nest in Scotland. The birds have already begun their migration to Africa, and one of the siblings (Deshar) started out by heading over the North Sea, then realized it was a mistake and turned back toward land. Fortunately he’s now back on track and about to cross the English Channel — ahead of his sister — on his way to Africa for the winter. See the migration map.

You can follow the Loch Garten birds using Google Earth, which is an amazing piece of software that Google offers for free. Visit the Google Earth page on the Loch Garten site for instructions about opening their migration map in the Google Earth software.

Also in Scotland, Logie and her chicks are being tracked on Roy Dennis’ website. At this stage they have lost track of Logie, but they’re not sure if something happened to her or if her transmitter malfunctioned.

By the way, Roy Dennis — one of the world’s leading experts on ospreys (especially from England and Scotland) — has a new book out called “A Life of Ospreys.” You can order one by emailing the address on his website; you can also get one from Amazon or from a third-party bookseller in the U.S. (look for “used and new” on the Amazon page). It’s a beautiful book, and if you love ospreys, I think you’ll definitely enjoy it.

In addition to the Scottish birds being tracked, Rob Bierregaard, from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, is tracking a set of young ospreys from the East Coast of the U.S., and you can follow his tracking updates on his 2008 osprey migration web page.

As for other osprey nests, it was a bit of a tough year in some places. For those who remember me mentioning the two Finland Osprey Cams, one of the cams had an unfortunate tragedy. A white-tailed eagle (the closest cousin to our American bald eagle) came in and attacked the youngest chick. The next day it returned and took the chick away. Here is a photo of the eagle.

At the Woods Hole Osprey Cam nest in Massachusetts they also had some tragedy. A few days after Rob Bierregaard successfully tagged Sheri — one of the three fledglings at the nest — she suddenly appeared in the nest in some kind of distress. She was then found on the ground with two severely injured legs and had to be euthanized. The only guess is that while learning to dive for food, she misjudged her target and possibly hit some rocks or another hard surface.

Unfortunately even after young ospreys survive the tough competition in their home nests, they then have to face the dangers of learning to fish, learning to fly, and migrating thousands of miles to a distant land. It’s a tough world out there.

As for our nests, I did want to remind folks that for now, you can still see our Eagle Cam on the WildCam.com website (registration is free). We share our camera feed with them, and since they have a bit more money than we do, they’ve decided to keep the cam feed up for now. So be sure to check in occasionally. If you do, you might see one of our eagle parents checking in at the nest. We have no idea where the big weeds came from in the bottom of the nest, but they’ll probably be gone when we go live again in November. For now, it looks like the eagles have a little garden at their nest, which is 80 feet up in the air!

As a final treat, I did want to mention that photographer Bob Quinn was out at Blackwater Refuge earlier this month and captured some wonderful photos of our summertime wildlife. Thanks again to Bob for sharing his photos with us.

Until next time,
Lisa - webmaster
Contact

Tags:
eagles, wildlife refuge, osprey cam, osprey cams, Blackwater Refuge, Maryland

It’s been a while since we’ve updated the blog, since the nest has been very quiet. Our pair has been at the nest on and off, as they are still defending it and bringing in new sticks. Some cam watchers might wonder why the ospreys hang around the nest when they have no chicks to raise; the reason they stay is that it’s important that they defend the nest if they hope to come back next year and use the platform for another season. If they abandoned it now, other ospreys (like an unattached male or a pair without a nest) might think it’s available and take it for their own. So our couple stays near the nest and practices their nest building.

Since we don’t have much to say about our nest, I thought I’d use this post to talk about some of the other osprey action that we’ve been monitoring. If you didn’t see my earlier post on the cam page about Bob Quinn’s recent osprey banding trip, then be sure to check out his gallery. Bob went on an osprey banding trip at Patuxent River Park in southern Maryland. The park’s osprey population has had a tough year. First, several big storms caused quite a few nest failures, and then a Great Horned Owl has been not only killing osprey chicks at the park but also killing some of the osprey mothers. In fact, while Bob was on the boat banding ospreys, his group found a dead female osprey in the water under one of the water platforms. Pretty amazing to think of an owl taking out full-grown adult ospreys.

Speaking of Bob’s photos, I did want to point out a few of his shots that were particularly interesting because they show some wonderful close-ups. In this first shot, you can see two chicks hunkered down inside the nest. Osprey young know instinctively to lay low in the nest when they hear their parents call out in alarm; this technique works well since their feathers blend in with the sticks and help camouflage them.

In this second shot, you can see a great close-up of a banded youngster (see the band on its left foot). Notice that the osprey chick has scale-like bumps on its lower legs and feet. These scales are called spicules and they help the osprey hold onto slippery fish. Also, notice that the youngster has orange eyes; the eyes will turn yellow once the bird matures. Finally notice the tan tips on its feathers, which is another sign that the bird is young. The feathers will eventually turn all brown once the bird reaches sexual maturity.

In this third shot, we get a great view of an osprey chick’s blood feathers. When feathers first develop, they are encased in a sheath that is made of keratin (like your fingernails). This sheath protects the feathers and feeds them with blood until the feathers are fully developed — hence the name blood feathers. Once the feather has developed, the sheath falls off (or is pulled off by the bird) and the feather unfurls. In this photo, we can see the blood (the blue color) feeding the developing feathers. Anyone handling a bird with blood feathers must be careful, because if one of them tears, the feather can bleed quite a lot.

In this fourth shot, we see a mother osprey skimming the water with her talons to cool down; this is a behavior that is common during the summer. In fact, on June 11, the Connecticut Audubon Osprey Cam reported similar behavior by their osprey adults. Their website said, “With the intense heat of the last several days, the adults have been using their bodies as an umbrella to shield the four chicks from the sun. We’ve also seen the adults skimming the surface of the water to wet their breast feathers and return to the nest to cool the chicks down.” It’s interesting to see how the adult ospreys use water to help keep themselves and their chicks cool.

And in this final shot, we see a wonderful example of the osprey’s third eyelid — or nictitating membrane. The ospreys use these translucent eyelids to clean their eyes and to protect them from harm — such as while fishing or feeding their young.

In addition to Bob’s incredible osprey shots, I also have a couple osprey tales to share. First, the Marine Study Nature Area in New York has an online Osprey Cam where they have four healthy chicks. Unfortunately, the youngest chick got entangled in a discarded balloon ribbon and a rescue had to be arranged, which you can see on YouTube. The Marine Study Nature Area website also links to a BBC article on the dangers of balloons in the environment. Be sure to read about the need to eliminate discarded balloons for the sake of wildlife.

Another interesting osprey story happened a couple weeks ago at an osprey nest in St. Michael’s Harbor in Maryland, where the nest fell into the water. Fortunately, some of the workers at the nearby Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum saw it happen and managed to get to the chick immediately. They took care of it overnight and then it was transported to Tri-State Bird Rescue by Suzi Feldhuhn, a friend of ours who is a volunteer at Tri-State. On the following Monday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided to renest the single chick in a neighboring nest that already had two chicks. Suzi told us it was a very successful renesting with the chick being accepted by its new family. As for the original pair that lost their nest, they’re in the area and are building a new nest on a nearby platform.

Suzi was kind enough to send us the two photos below showing the chick being placed in its new nest and then sitting with its new siblings. Click on the thumbnails for a larger image.

Many osprey nests around the Net are starting to see young birds fledging. As we mentioned on the cam page, the chicks at the North Carolina Osprey Cam and Kentucky Osprey Cam have begun to fledge, and the four chicks at the Connecticut Osprey Cam are also close to going. Here is a great shot showing one of them hovering above the nest. We wish all these young birds the best of luck as they begin venturing out into the world.

Partial Closure of Wildlife Drive

As a final note, for those cam watchers who might be planning a trip to Blackwater Refuge this summer, I wanted to remind you that a portion of the Wildlife Drive at the Refuge will be closed for about two months while we repair an impoundment that protects the Drive from the Blackwater River. Only the first section of the Drive will be closed, so you will still be able to access the latter section of the road. Also, while we have the road closed, we also plan to repair our Marsh Edge Trail boardwalk, so hopefully by the time all the work is done, we’ll have an improved trail and Wildlife Drive. Read our press release for more information about what services will be available if you come.

Thanks again to all those who are sending in cam images to our galleries. We don’t update the galleries as often these days because the action is slow, but we will update them soon and we appreciate any images of interesting action that you see.

Until next time,
Lisa - webmaster
Contact

Tags:
wildlife refuge, ospreys, osprey cam, Blackwater Refuge, Maryland

First, I wanted to say that we’ll try to get the Gallery updated in the next couple of days, so everyone can see all the photos. But basically the short version of what happened is we think the heavy, cold rain that has been hitting the area hard was too much for the couple (especially the female), so she left the eggs alone for over an hour — twice — this afternoon, and eventually a crow came in and broke them.

This storm has caused major problems throughout Maryland with quite a bit of flooding and coastal flood warnings in the county where Blackwater Refuge is located. But on top of that rain, we also had very cool temperatures, and this appeared to be too much for our parents.

The mother stuck with the eggs through the worst of it today, but this afternoon she suddenly got up and disappeared for about an hour. At that time, we became worried about the eggs’ viability because the temperature was very cool. She then returned (we think it was the female) but then disappeared again. During the second long absence, a crow came in several times and eventually broke and possibly took part of the eggs. The egg remnants you see in the nest are the remains of what the crow did not take. We have seen one of the parents (probably the female) coming and sitting where the eggs had been. We saw this last year too, but eventually our female realized the eggs were gone.

We are honestly surprised that this happened, because even though we thought we had a young couple, they appeared to be doing very well. It’s quite possible that if we hadn’t had such a cold storm, the female might have made it through the full incubation. But sometimes young parents do things like this, and lose their eggs to predators.

I did want to point out that although we lost our eggs last year in an identical fashion (to a crow), our couple last year was impacted by a third osprey — an intruder female — and our male abandoned the nest for a period of time. When the female eventually left to fish for herself, a crow came in and broke the eggs. We do not think that happened this year because we had been seeing both parents regularly — including a couple of times on Monday. So the male intruder we mentioned previously in the web log did not appear to be a factor in this unfortunate turn of events today. It was more likely the weather.

Cam watchers have asked about a second clutch. Sometimes raptor parents will lay a second clutch if they lose their first, but since our couple was late in nesting this year, and since they appear to be young and a bit inexperienced, I’m not really expecting a second clutch. I may be wrong, but I think we’ll see the ospreys hanging around the nest for the rest of the summer, maybe even mating occasionally, but not producing any chicks for this year.

I think the best we can hope for is that they will return next year and give it another try. If they do, they’ll be more experienced and possibly more determined to stick with the eggs no matter what kind of weather they face.

No matter what happens the rest of this season, we’ll keep the Osprey Cam online. Like last year, we will keep it up to see what the ospreys do; and if they are not around as much, we might even see the return of our bald eagles on the platform. It’s true that we do turn off the Eagle Cam once the eaglets leave for good, but that is only because once the eagle family is gone, we see very little wildlife on the Eagle Cam (the occasional squirrel or Blue jay). But we like to leave the Osprey Cam on all year because the platform attracts a lot of bird life, and it’s enjoyable to watch no matter what the season.

We’ll keep the web log open for now, just because we’re not absolutely sure how our osprey pair will deal with this unexpected development. And we’re sorry for all our cam watchers who were really excited about the prospect of osprey chicks this year — especially since we were without them last year for the first time since we came online with our Osprey Cam back in 2001. But it was not meant to be.

Until next time,
Lisa - webmaster
Contact

Tags:
eagles, wildlife refuge, osprey cam, osprey eggs, Blackwater Refuge, Maryland