Hatching!

 Our first chicks have hatched! We watched those early signs that something was happening on Thursday and were finally able to confirm a feeding on Friday morning, May 26. This was our earliest pair to lay eggs this year so this opens the window for others to begin hatching. Our large population is quite spread out this year with a few nests that just laid eggs, while others will be hatching soon.

We have discovered 12 new nests so far and I expect there will be more. We are still searching for some birds that appeared on their nest but then disappeared….and also looking for some birds who had their nests on cell towers removed over the winter and with the altered towers now unnestable, we wonder where they went. In some cases ospreys were seen briefly but then disappeared.

As the population grows, behaviors change and we have seen some startling aggression at one nest where an intruder relentlessly attacked the residential pair for many weeks until they seem to have given up. They are seen occasionally but have given up on breeding efforts. In my 30 years of watching ospreys I have seen aggessive attacks between ospreys about four times…so it’s not a common occurance. Ospreys are semi colonial, so ospreys attract other ospreys and we routinely observe some circling, chirping, even chasing and footing each other….even an extra osprey landing on a nest…but most interactions are limited and not very aggressive.