Good news/bad news…

 Well it’s a good news /bad news kind of day. First the bad news…..overnight two of the arboretum cam nest eggs ended up out of the nest cup. I don’t know how the first one got out there….but it looked cracked to me and may have been unfertilized. Later in the day it got stepped on and cracked further into small pieces ( seen above the female in the first photo). The second egg ended up in the lower left corner very suddenly and I watched the video over and over to figure it out….i think when the male came with a fish, and the female got up to get it, the egg may have been stuck to her belly feathers…and then it dropped off where she was standing with the fish. It remains there. The nest cup looks wet and muddy, so that may explain why it stuck to her. It’s sad, but we hope the remaining egg will be ok. So the first photo is of the Arb cam nest. Other photos from another nest.

The good news….our two first nests have begun hatching! I was at one nest this morning while it was still foggy and drizzling….and only 43 degrees. The male was sticking very close by….and he would only leave to get more nest material. Sadly some of it was landscape fabric. I wish people would be more careful with what they leave laying on the ground. When the female got up to look beneath, the male stood next to her and stared into the nest cup. Sweet. Then when she settled back into incubation / brooding, he snuggled down right next to her! He was not sitting on eggs, but he was giving her moral support! This is our oldest banded male now….20 years old! Ya gotta love this guys attentiveness, and care. The photos are horrible but maybe you can make out two heads in one image and then another one where they are both staring down into the nest.

Then I went on to another nest where the adults were pretty darn interested in what was happening in the nest cup! I did not see a feeding yet….but I know these touching signs that something special is happening!

May 19, 2025…

 There is a lot going on behind the scenes as we try to deal with some issues….dangerous situations for ospreys that need to be addressed. It takes time to evaluate situations and behaviors, decide what would be best for the birds, and contact proper authorities for help. We have already found ten new nests! I am trying to identify (banded or not banded) all birds, and read the bands that I have found. It takes a lot of time. And tomorrow the window opens for our earliest nests to begin hatching….

It’s fun when I find new young birds that are offspring of some of our older, banded birds! So many generations of ospreys!
I am also still searching for some birds who had their nests removed and were seen briefly….but where did they go?
I hope my readers will let me know if new nests pop up….keep your eyes on cell towers, power lines, ballfield lights.
As the population grows we also need more nest monitors….so If you have a spotting scope, are able to commit to checking one or more nests weekly, and would like to get involved, please shoot me an email at osprey.mn@gmail.com. We have a list of guidelines to direct your observations as we try to collect the same data on all nests.
We are already seeing some potential problems, failures. I was watching a nest that had two adults a few weeks ago, but last weekend I watched for many hours and never saw the male. This weekend again, I saw no male and the female left the nest to get a fish and she wolfed it down perched on the nest edge before she hopped back into the nest to resume incubation. This doesn’t look good. On another nest we have a female incubating, but we don’t ever see a male helping her. We believe this might be a situation where one male was attending two nests, but since eggs have been laid, he is primarily attending to only one nest. This is often the outcome of these polygynous situations. One nest will be the primary nest and will get most of the males attention and eventually the other nest will fail. We are trying to document this, but a male that is rarely there, can be very hard to identify! I am wondering if the nest where the female left to get her own fish may be in the same situation. Does her “mate” have another nest? I run back and forth and spend hours trying to identify these males to confirm my suspicions. If males are banded, we can prove what is occurring, but if they aren’t banded, it can be more difficult.
We are continuing to see the population develop into loose colonies….ospreys attract other ospreys, so new nests pop up between two other nests! And the closeness of nests can provide more opportunities for males to spread their DNA! It’s just instinct, folks! We must remember that the two driving forces of these birds is to survive, and to reproduce!
I am sure we will be announcing our first hatches very soon!

Three eggs at the Arb.

 We have three eggs on the Arboretum cam Nest! The clutch is probably complete. It was laid overnight….shortly after midnight I could still see only two eggs but early this morning, just before 6 am, I see three…so in the wee hours of May 10 she laid the third egg.

First egg at the Arb cam nest…

 The first egg arrived at the Arboretum Cam nest today….about 10:05. If you can roll back the video to about 10 a.m. today (May 4) you can watch her “in labor”. Then it was pretty cute when the male came and was trying to peek under her to see it!

Busy busy!

 Well I am up to my eyeballs this time of year….still working my way around to over 180 nests for the first time, reading bands, even the silver ones ( ooof) , and figuring out what is going on at each nest. We have some chronically late birds that leave an opening for other birds to either take over their nests, or copulate with their mate. But in the end, the territorial birds usually win back their nest. We documented this so many years ago, observing so many extra pair copulations, refuting the myth that ospreys mate for life. It’s a game of musical nests every spring, tho most long time mated pairs do end up back in their territory, if they survived migration. Not all do survive. It looks like our oldest male, who would have been 22 this year, did not make it back to his territory. It makes me very sad. And tho I thought we had lost other banded birds, many of them have shown up. But I have to warn the nest monitors to keep looking at legs for bands, even if the first birds seen were unbanded, new birds! Things do change quite often.

I have had fun running into long time monitors and property owners that I haven’t seen recently….I love to connect with the people who support this project in various ways. It’s so much fun to spend some time watching ospreys with the monitors….and getting to interpret behaviors, vocalizations etc. After all these years of observing ospreys, I do have different perspectives on what’s going on!

We are seeing a pair at the Arboretum Cam nest….they seem to be a totally new unbanded pair, so we have no info about them. They are behaving like young birds, so we will see what happens.

I thought you would be interested in seeing these HUGE nests….ospreys work so hard to build and rebuild their nests, and I love it when humans leave them in place. So many nests were removed this year, sigh….leaving ospreys scrambling to rebuild somewhere.

And I am deeply grateful for those who make financial donations to support this big effort. I couldnt do this without a lot of different kinds of help.

Who is at the Arb cam nest?

 A lot of people are asking about the pair of ospreys seen lately on the Arboretum Cam nest. Are they the same pair as last year? No…..the banded male from last year disappeared, while he still had a chick depending on him, so that is why we haven’t seen him this year. The male seen recently is unbanded and new. The same question about the female has been more difficult to answer. Last years female was unbanded and so is this new one. I have spent a lot of time looking at her markings and comparing them to photos of last years female. I have tried to capture screen shots from a similar angle. Studies have shown that the dorsal feather pattern is one that remains the same throughout an ospreys life. So let’s look first at this years female and then last years female….to me these appear to be different females. Compare those patterns and see what you think!

Eggs already!

 I suppose some of you are wondering what’s going on at the Arboretum cam nest. As some of you may remember, the male from last year, banded MS, suddenly disappeared when he still had a chick to feed. The female had already begun her migration. The chick was alone for a few days and then the youngster disappeared too and the last sighting of her on the nest revealed a large shadow that chased her off. I searched for both of them for days and found nothing. Several other males showed up on the nest after that, and MS provided no nest defense if he were alive and in the area. They don’t abandon their offspring either, so we presumed he had perished. There were several eagles in the area at that time, which may offer a possible explanation. So it is not surprising that MS has not been seen this year. Neither has the female. 

But we have had sporadic brief visits on the cam nest from another banded male, PZ. He has been the territorial male on another nest less than a mile south of the cam nest. He has been seen on that nest with a female. The female had some difficulties when she got some landscape fabric stuck to her talon and was flying around with this fabric trailing behind her. Apparently this was called in to the Raptor Center and they contacted me to see if I could catch her, but she was behind locked gates, and was able to fly. I rechecked her the next day and she appeared to be free of the landscape fabric that was still lying on the nest. As many of you know, ospreys are known for picking up weird stuff to line their nests, and sometimes this can be catastrophic. Chicks have died from becoming entangled in twine and other man made materials…..so it’s important for people to not leave that stuff lying in the ground, and sometimes nests may need to be cleaned out. (The photo I have of one week old chicks on the top of this page was taken when I went up in a bucket truck to clean out large bundles of twine in a nest many years ago!) Today I witnessed the same thing at another nest…a female with some landscape fabric attached to her foot as she flew. She kept flying and trying to get free of it and she finally did. When I saw that this material landed in an open grassy area where she might see it, I hiked out and picked it up to dispose of it properly. Whew! 

 Meanwhile, I am still seeing PZ going back and forth between these two nests.  At one nest, he has a female and at the other he doesn’t. But it seems as if things are “unsettled” between him and the female at the other nest. We have not seen her come to the cam nest. So I guess UNSETTLED is the headline. We will see how this plays out, and where PZ decides to put down roots, and with what female! He was the first male on the cam nest last year as well, before MS returned, so he has a definite interest in that territory. 

Overall, things are weird. We still have many empty nests, birds missing, a lot of banded birds that have not been seen. And yet I found a nest today  that has already laid eggs! This is one of the earliest dates for incubation so far. I will check my records for that, but April 12 seems early. Last year our first incubation date was April 14, and that seemed early! I waited and watched for what happened when the male returned with a fish, since sometimes females sit to “test” the nest for comfort before she really lays eggs….but when the female took the fish to eat, the male stared into the nest cup,and settled into incubating posture. So it’s for real!

More and more….

 Just to get you excited….a beautiful shot from Ann Merritt. Our old friends are trickling into town and often it’s our older, experienced birds that return first. Today I read a band on a 20 year old Osprey! Many nests are still empty or have one bird waiting for its mate, but I think the next week will be a busy one for monitors as more ospreys show up in their home territories!

Old friends!

 We now have at least two ospreys back on their nests….one on the east side and one on the west side! I have read my first band too….an 18 year old! Hope his mate returns soon. Fingers crossed. We have set our clocks based upon this pair for quite a few years….the first to return, the first to lay eggs, the first to hatch and the first to fledge.

Oh another report just came in about ospreys on another nest, so they are arriving all over the metro now!

They are right on schedule! As the annual report said, our first osprey returned last year on March 31. (This same bird!)The last week of March is the usual time if we dont have a lingering winter with frozen lakes.

Always good to see old friends…..

Here we go!

 Our first osprey has been confirmed back on its nest. I will read the band tomorrow! So osprey season has officially begun!

Soon?

 We are probably going to see our first ospreys returning to their nests in the next week. I hope the experienced monitors will return this year, please do send me an email letting me know. If any of you are able to take on an additional nest or two, let me know that as well. I will not be able to do as much as I did last year. Keep looking up!

2024 DATA RESULTS!

                                     2024 OSPREY RESEARCH AND PRODUCTION SUMMARY

By Vanessa Greene

The 2023-24 winter was very dry with little snow so our first Ospreys in the spring of 2024 were observed on 3/31, followed by many others in the first two weeks of April. In my 31st year of monitoring Osprey nests in the eight county Twin Cities metro area, the known population was somewhat stagnant. The number of occupied nests monitored was almost the same as last year, with a slightly lower failure rate, and an increased mortality rate over last year. The summer started out with heavy early rains and the second half of the breeding season was hot and dry. The early Ospreys laid the first eggs by April 15!

There were 183 nests which were occupied* by a pair of adult ospreys. (182 in 2023). There may be more nests we do not know about and we hope the public will continue to report new nests to us. We discovered 9 new nests, but also had previously occupied nests that were empty this year. Eggs were laid in 169 active* nests (174 in 2023). There were 134 nests that had at least one chick that was confirmed to have fledged successfully or survived to fledging age (129 in 2023). We documented 49 nests which failed (53 in 2023, 35 in 2022). We separate failed nests into two distinct subcategories; there were 12 nests where a pair was present but no eggs were laid (9 last year) and 4 additional nests where we are not sure if eggs were laid or not.

There were 34 nests where eggs were laid but they failed to successfully fledge a single chick or the cause of failure was unknown (44 last year). (Not laying eggs is considered to be a kind of nest failure by other scientists.) Out of those 34 failed nests where eggs were laid, there were 20 nests where hatching did occur but all chicks died. There were 13 nests where no signs of hatching were ever observed. The 2023 failure rate dropped to 27%. This represents a slight decrease over last year! (in 2023 the failure rate was 29%, In 2022 the failure rate was 21%, 2021 the failure rate was 18%, 2020 it was 27%, in 2019 it was 39%, in 2018 it was 29%, in 2017 it was 28%, and in 2016 it was 25%.)

There were 257 chicks that were known to have fledged successfully or survived to fledging age! (253 in 2023, 264 in 2022, 295 in 2021). Most successful nests had two chicks this year, with 64 nests with two chicks, 30 nests with three chicks, and 39 nests that produced a single chick.

The known mortalities of chicks this year were higher than last year with 57 chicks which were known to have died or disappeared before fledging, (47 in 2023, 23 in 2022, 26 in 2021). In addition, there were 9 nests where signs of hatching were observed, with adults feeding chicks, but they all died before we could get an accurate count. The causes for the increasingly high mortality rate among chicks are uncertain, but may be related to climate change. Many males seemed to be missing from nests more than usual, perhaps due to difficulties finding fish, requiring them to travel further, and be gone longer when hunting. Many females were observed leaving chicks alone to help provide food. We had at least 8 single parent nests. Many lakes had high algae levels which made fishing difficult. These circumstances may have resulted in brood reduction, starving chicks and increased opportunities for predation. There were 7 known adult mortalities and 3 banded males that disappeared mid-season, (but did not show up at The Raptor Center.)

There were only 45 adult Ospreys identified by their bands, as the number of banded birds continues to drop. There were four additional adults with silver bands that were unable to be read. We were sad to document that there were 6 color banded birds that did not return this year. Only one of the returning banded ospreys was from another state (Iowa).

There were 6 nests that were removed from cell towers or lights over the winter. We located 9 new nesting territories with a pair present. Of these new nests, 5 of them successfully fledged chicks, with outcome unknown on 1 nest. It is interesting to note that of the 183 occupied territories this year, 84 were on osprey nesting platforms, 44 were on cell or radio towers, 29 were on ballfield lights, 21 were on a power pole or transmission tower, 4 were on other manmade structures and 1 nest was built in a tree

The oldest male this year, was 21 years of age, with one that was 19, one that was 18 years of age. ALL of these older males bred successfully! Our oldest female was 18 years old, with three that were 17 years of age and all bred successfully.

The overall productivity of occupied nests which were successful this year rose slightly to 74%! (71% in 2023, 79% in 2022, 82% in 2021, 73% in 2020, 62% in 2019, 71% in 2018, 72% in 2017, 76% in 2016, 68% in 2015).

The mean number of young fledged per successful nest dropped slightly to 1.92% (1.96% in 2023, 2.00% in 2022, 2.11% in 2021, 2.04% in 2020, 2.09% in 2019, 2.13 in 2018, 2.25 in 2017, 2.24 in 2016).

The mean number of young fledged per active nest rose to 1.52% (1.45% in 2023, 1.65% in 2022, 1.78% in 2021, 1.65% in 2020,1.39% in 2019,1.64 in 2018, 1.75 in 2017,1.84 in 2016).

The mean number of young fledged per occupied nest rose slightly to 1.40% (1.39% in 2023, 1.58% in 2022,1.74% in 2021, 1.49% in 2020,1.28% in 2019, 1.51 in 2018, 1.62 in 2017, 1.70 in 2016).

A small group of nests had the chicks banded with silver bands only. Three chicks received silver bands while in rehab, prior to release. In spite of many days of searching, and reading 14 silver bands, we were unable to locate any of these rehabbed chicks to confirm survival post release. We will continue to watch for them in future years.

It is interesting to note that we have recorded 3,773 chicks that fledged from monitored nests since the inception of this project.

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*Successful nests are those that were known to have fledged at least one chick successfully, active nests are those where eggs are laid and occupied nests are those where pairs are present at a nest site for a period of time, regardless of the time of year or whether or not they lay.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 2024

 Let me start with the acknowledgements for 2024…..and the data results will be posted in a few days!

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 2024

There are so many people who have been instrumental in helping Twin Cities Metro Osprey Watch continue this Osprey research. This year, 2024, marked my 31st year of monitoring all known nests in the eight-county metro area surrounding the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St Paul, and I could not do this without a great deal of help. The careful, monitoring of these nests and the consistent collection and analysis of data over so many years may prove to be a significant contribution to understanding the world we live in, the health of our environment as well as overall productivity and behavior of this population of Ospreys.

Special thanks to Carol Christians, Alice Stoddard, Dani Porter Lucero, Meg Smith, Debbie De Frank Jordan, Ann Merritt, Larry Luebben, Jack Kimmerle, Pat Norton, Jean and Rob DeZeeuw, Donna Daubendiek, Rick Endo, Mary Mullet, Cindy Angerhofer, Stephanie Burley, Allison McGinnis, Brenda Goeltl, Ken Fischer, Gail Isaak, Marjorie Heap, Vicky Douglas, Tammy Holmer, Ann Altman, Lisa Gilliland, James Kelley and Will Hathaway for sharing their observations, their commitment to this effort, their photos, information, and their love for these birds. I am deeply, profoundly grateful to those who kept their commitments and kept an eye on the nests throughout the season. With the continuing growth of the project, I simply can’t do it all alone.

Thanks to all the private property owners who are such important and wonderful hosts to our Ospreys, and who have provided me access to these nests for monitoring.

A very deep, heartfelt thanks to all who contributed financially to this project in 2024: Ruth Rechtzigel, Debbie Jordan, Rick Endo, Carol Craig, Cindy Angerhofer, Betsy Kerr, Ann Lund, Allison McGinnis, John Muelken, and Jonna Bollum!

A huge thanks to The Raptor Resource Project for their generous ongoing support.

I am deeply grateful for all the help I have received in so many different forms, and for showing your faith in my ongoing efforts to continue this research study.

Vanessa Greene

February 2025

Osprey.mn@gmail.com

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February 2025

 Hello Osprey people…..I know you’re thoughts are beginning to turn towards our feathered friends and people are looking on this page for last years results. I am still working on the annual report but was slowed down a great deal by getting very sick in late December / early January and ending up in the hospital. I am recovering slowly and working on the huge pile of data we collected last year. Every year wrangling all the data into a cohesive report gets harder!  It’s a lot of counting, recounting, cross checking, digging thru all my notes as well as all the reports from the monitors, making decisions about how to categorize outcomes on every nest….sometimes we just don’t have all the info. We can’t be at every nest, every day!  It looks like we monitored 183 nests last year! I hope to have it all finished by the end of February. Thanks for your patience! Stay tuned….