More sad news…

 More sad news….I just recieved word from a vet at The Raptor Center that the osprey chick that was rescued Monday evening had to be euthanized. This one suffered the same catastrophic injuries that the other two chicks who were discovered hanging from a cell tower or ballfield light…severely dislocated hip from the long struggle to free itself. At least it didnt have to die slowly while hanging there. We are hoping that in the future we may be able to rescue these birds sooner….tho we have too many nests to check them all daily. We hope the monitors we do have might check nests on cell towers more frequently at fledging time. Its such a critical time for these young birds and it tends to be a time when some monitors start to think of osprey season as winding down…when its actually the time that these young birds are most likely to get into trouble and need our help. Fledging time is a fragile time. The mortality rate is high in the first year for ospreys, with some estimating that less than 40% will survive. Ospreys are a species that can live a fairly long time, 20-25 years. They will have many breeding successes and many failures in those years, but that knowledge doesnt make these losses any easier to take.

We did our best, and we will continue to do what we can, when we can, and I am deeply grateful to all of the people who were instrumental in this rescue.

Another crisis…

 Another trying situation unfolded yesterday. One of my volunteer monitors, Alice Stoddard noticed an osprey in trouble, caught on something on a cell tower way out in Wright County. Alice had called the cell company and gotten no return call. I contacted our friends at Meridian Blue again…..gave them all the info regarding the cell co, tower number etc. Sadly, Alicia, the owner of Meridian Blue was initially denied permission to climb that tower by the cell company. I was also talking to Amy Simso Dean at the Raptor Center and she decided to put some additional pressure on the cell company and eventually they agreed to allow Meridian Blue to climb the tower to rescue the bird. It took hours, lots of phone calls, text messages and finally at about 7:30 p.m. Meridian Blue had a crew on site, and The Raptor Center had a transport volunteer there, Bill Dom, along with the Twin Cities Metro Osprey Watch nest monitor mentioned above. Amy and I were texting each other thru the process, and shortly before 9 p.m. they had the bird down and all climbers were safely back on the ground. It was too late to get the bird to TRC but that final leg of thw journey will occur this morning and we are waiting to hear what the birds status is.

Once again I send out a HUGE thankyou to all involved, especially Meridian Blue for doing what noone else could do. I am so deeply grateful to everyone at Meridian Blue, to Alice and Bill, and Amy.

We are hoping for the best for this young bird….I will update later.

August 17

 OK!OK!OK….ONE MORE TRY!

We went out and tried one more time to find the chick. We failed. Today even the male was hard to find. The female was sitting in one of her favorite perches alone. we checked some other unlikely spots where we were told the parents were circling the day little Arb jumped out….prowling thru the brush. Sadly we found nothing, heard nothing. We watched momma for quite some time but she gave us no clues.

Another round of thanks to Carrie, Debbie and Ken. We talked about how difficult it is to let go, to accept that that little bugger that I held in my arms so recently has probably perished. He deserved better. This outcome is so tragic, especially knowing how close to a successful fledge he probably was. He just needed a little more safe time on his nest. Sigh. So today, we grieve. Tomorrow I go look for that other chick that had a close call and whose survival needs to be confirmed.

I will not forget this little osprey anytime soon. Nor will I forget his panicked departure from the nest. We wanted to help him so badly.

August 16

 I searched the Arb from 9 to almost 5:30 today for the missing chick. I started by whacking my way thru the squash field, thinking the chick could be hiding in there….and he still could be, but I couldnt see or hear him. Then a new volunteer showed up and she has decided to become our newest nest monitor next year! It was lovely to meet Carrie Bowar and share some info about ospreys as we looked around. During her time we located the adults and spent time watching them in hopes that they might get a fish and fly around, which might stimulate a food begging response from a chick. She was lucky to get to see the female bathing! Fun to watch her splash and duck and float in the water. But we did not hear any vocalizations that sounded like the chick. Then two of my regular nest monitors showed up, Debbie Jordan (yes, the debbie who worked so hard on the cell tower situation. She is a glutton for punishment so showed up today too!) and Ken Fischer , who spent all afternoon beating bushes, searching the prairie, scanning the lake, looking, and listening. Sadly, we found no chick, heard no food begging, found no evidence of the chick at all. We watched the male flying loops over the nesting area with a stick, clearly looking for the chick. Later in the day we found both of them in a dead tree east of the nest. They did not seem distressed, tho at times seemed to be looking for the chick. They did not ever land back on the nest. By the end of the day, the Arb was being locked up, noone inquired about our results, no Arb employees helped us today. It was very hard for us to give up and go home. We dragged our feet, tried to figure out where else this chick could possibly be, where else we could possibly look, talked about tomorrow…..all three of these volunteers wanted to try again, but I am not sure it will be fruitful. I have a chick I need to check on over on the opposite side of the metro. Its so discouraging and depressing. But the ray of light that I am grateful for is these wonderful, osprey loving volunteers on my project who showed up and trudged around on this muggy day because they wanted so much to find this young osprey who had won our hearts. We were unable to do that, and we do feel defeated….but at least we were able to share our disappointment. A million thanks to Carrie, Debbie and Ken.

August 15

 I am aware that the Arb chick jumped out of the nest again, just as he did yesterday when human activity was occurring directly under the nest. There was an emergency repair needed on Monday when a water line broke. This stage of development is a fragile time and its easy to cause a chick to “pre fledge” or jump too soon, before he has fully developed the necessary strength and skills to fly and to land safely. He has not been flapping, hovering or displaying the usual behaviors which preceed a successful fledge. He is still within the window of time when fledging is normally expected.

He and the adults were giving alarm calls before he took off.

When I saw what happened, I once again called the Arb. I also went out there and I spent three hours searching for the chick. Jim joined me and helped search all over the area but we could not find him or hear him. I watched the adults carefully for clues, but when they flew over, I did not hear the chick food begging. Jim had to go, so at 4:30 we ceased searching. The chick is very vulnerable on the ground overnight, and is not being fed. ( Adult ospreys generally wont feed a chick on the ground because it leaves them vulnerable to predation).

I will return in the morning and try again.

Baling twine…..disaster

 We finally got the chick down from a cell tower where it was in trouble

. It’s been over 24 hours of hanging there thrashing, and our hearts breaking more and more each moment it struggled. For some reason all the calls to the cell company were unfruitful yesterday. A million thanks to Debbie Jordan , a Twin Cities Metro Osprey Watch volunteer extraordinaire, for all her work and for never giving up. Today she finally got in touch with someone at the cell company in charge of environmental stuff who said no one told her about this situation yesterday. Well, long story short we were finally connected to Meridian Blue Construction who sent a crew to rescue the chick. The chick was still alive but sadly, another chick was dead in the nest. Killed by baling twine. A deep thanks goes out to every one at Meridian Blue….Alicia and Bob, the climbers Jake and Will for doing heroic work rescuing this poor bird. I cannot thank them enough. Also thanks to Karen, a transport volunteer from The Raptor Center, for taking the bird to TRC for medical help. We will keep you posted about it’s condition when we hear something.

What must we do to get people to dispose of that baling twine safely so these things don’t happen???? This stuff is lethal to many kinds of wildlife. Ospreys are attracted to it because of its bright color, and bring it to the nest and it never deteriorates, it shreds into fine, cutting material. People MUST pick it up and dispose of it appropriately. I post gruesome photos to make people aware of just how awful this stuff is. I know I am preaching to the choir here.

Anyway just as I finish up that situation I hear the Little Arb chick jumped out again….apparently frightened by some activity below. So I called our hero at the Arb, Jim Elskamp, and he found our little friend and got him back in the nest. A special thanks again to Jim! Our little osprey should be fledging now but I have not seen much flapping of his wings…..so he needs to do some work to build his strength. He is the correct age for fledging and his feathers should be hard penned by now. Time for some prefledge workouts buddy!

So a million thanks to everyone at Meridian Blue, and to Jim at the Arb….and especially to Debbie Jordan for her perseverance in kicking butts until we got the help we needed.

Rescued the Arb chick again

 We had to rescue the Arboretum cam chick twice this week….the first time last Wednesday after it blew out of the nest in a storm, and the second time at 6:30 am this morning when it was self feeding and a little gust of wind flipped him over….he hung on the side of the nest for a while and then fell. I saw it and called the Groundskeeper Jim Elskamp at 7 a.m.  and we met out there and found the chick and returned him to the nest again. Some photos below of both rescues…we took him to the Raptor Center on Wednesday for observation, but today we just consulted with the vet there, and decided to put him back on the nest. We will all be watching for any signs of trouble…..hoping he stays put for a while now.