Yeah yeah yeah….another apology for not posting anything sooner. It’s been a wild and challenging year here. We have been watching an unprecedented number of nests with a single parent. And sometimes, one adult cannot provide enough for a large family. We are seeing a very high mortality rate among chicks and adults. There may be multiple reasons for this….but heavy rains have resulted in poor water quality in some places. Lots of algae, sediment, lily pads….which makes it hard for ospreys to fish. I have spent so much time visiting and revisiting nests to count chicks, search for missing chicks and adults. Two of my favorite banded males have disappeared. So I reached out to The Raptor Center today to check on a chick I brought in earlier. Unfortunately they have already released that chick and another one. I like to be there to watch over them post release to see if they are being fed. Now it will be difficult to single them out from other chicks in the area. I would have made different choices about where to release them based on my observations over 30 years. But they also gave me a list of 13 ospreys ( 6 adults and 7 juveniles) that have come in this summer from my study area and this is very, very sad….but helpful to our data regarding outcomes. Me and several of my monitors have devoted significant time to searching for these missing adults and juveniles….and this does help us fill in some holes. Not the way we want to, but at least we have fewer questions and can stop looking. However we still have many missing birds that they did not receive. So some mysteries remain. Honestly, it kind of took the wind out of me today to see that list. They say they are admitting a record number of birds. This is consistant with what we are seeing too.
We watch these nests so carefully and we know when something is going wrong, birds are missing….but we can’t always find them or rescue them. There are still a lot of people who don’t find value in what we do, who don’t believe what we tell them about their nests. Some people still believe that a chick can fly off the nest for the first time and magically take care of itself and not return to the nest to be fed. We know that isn’t true. If they don’t return to be fed, something unfortunate has happened. Ospreys are not precocial like ducks….able to feed themselves shortly after hatching. They are altricial, which means they depend upon parents for a long period after hatching, and even after fledging. I have been watching chick development for 30 years and I have a pretty good sense of when something has gone wrong…and when it hasnt! I got an email about a chick in a nest that an observer thought was undersized and had been left behind and needed rescue. I had been watching that nest but none the less, I went to recheck it. Chick actually had fledged and was flying and landing nearby…and it was the same size as Dad, and was being well fed. ( very full crop) Just a late hatch and therefore a late fledger. And since it is a female, it was hanging out on the nest a lot, waiting for food to be delivered. All normal behaviors. So we keep doing what we do….we know when to be concerned, and when not to. We grieve over the losses, because every bird matters. And we celebrate the nests where three beautiful chicks have fledged successfully. I have been lucky to watch some adults out fishing, some chicks trying to practice their water starts….there are a LOT of skills to develope before they are independent. I will search for the chicks that were released in hopes that I can spot them being fed. It’s very hard for a chick to spend a month in rehab during such an important phase of their life, when they should be learning so many important skills while their parents are still feeding them. I will do what I can to find them and to learn more about how these young birds fare when released post rehab. Its much easier for adults. It is still fun to see these beautiful young birds perched near their nests….fledged!
