August 8, 2015...

Once again I must apologize for the gap in posts. There has been so much going on that its hard to get around to writing. First of all we are still checking nests for successful fledging and finding more failed nests. In fact, I am finding it troubling that at least nine nests have failed in about a five mile radius in one part of the metro. There is no other concentrated pocket of failures like that in any other area that I am monitoring. One person casually blamed it all on Eagles, but to assign blame like that there must be some evidence to support that assertion and I haven't seen it. I observed one of those nine nests being harassed by Eagles, who were nesting nearby, and as a result the Ospreys eggs did not hatch. They were chased off the nest so often by the Eagles that their eggs may have died, although we don't know if they were fertile or not. I observed no eagle harassment on any of the other nests in that area. One nest clearly failed as a result of Great Horned Owl predation since the adult female was found dead on the ground with her head missing, and all chicks gone. Owls often remove the head of a bird that large since they cannot carry the entire body. There are many other areas  in the metro where we see numerous Eagles, and the osprey nests in those area have been successful. So what is going on? I have no answer. I guess sometimes we can only notice the patterns and raise questions. This is something worth paying attention to. Could there be a water quality issue? Could there be a contagious disease like avian flu? This is why we continue to research and monitor the nests of these Ospreys. We have 31 years of data collected and that allows us to examine long term trends in productivity. Ospreys are an indicator species, at the top of the aquatic food chain, so the health of their population reveals much about our environment. This is what keeps me going...the questions. My curiousity has never waned about these birds, and their behaviors. I am working very hard to account for all chicks after fledge and it is not easy. It requires repeated visits sometimes and searching for the young ones. It's so delightful to locate all the chicks in a nesting territory and watch them flying, chasing each other, trying to dive into the water, all the dipsy doodle aerial maneuvers...and then congregating back at the nest and whining desperately for food. They are a noisy bunch! It's also so frustrating to not be able to find them all. Its beginning to look like our overall failure rate may be high this year. This is also the time of year that the fledglings get into trouble and rescues need to be done. We know of several that were rescued, one died and one may soon be returned to its nest.  And yet, we are also still seeing new banded birds! We refer to these young unmated birds as "floaters"! It's actually a very interesting and busy time of year! Me and the volunteer monitors are being stretched thin as we try to determine true outcomes on the nests.