On Osprey Time

  Tree Swallows living in the bottom of an Osprey nest in Idaho, courtesy of Karen Balch. Ever notice the small birds coming and going around large Osprey nests? At first it seems disconcerting to see prey so close to this mighty bird of prey, but the little birds are safe. Ospreys are obligate fish-eaters; birds have nothing to worry about. The sloppy stick Osprey nests can get as big—sometimes as tall as 10 feet—and frequently, house smaller breeding birds in or beneath active Osprey nests. During A tall Osprey nest built on a cliff in Italy, courtesy of Quora. the spring, the Salt Point Osprey nest usually has a house sparrow nesting in its base. Besides house sparrows, cavity-nesting common grackles, tree swallows, and European starlings are often noted within Osprey nests. These cohabitations are peaceful with no agonistic interactions. Interestingly, in areas with Ospreys nesting in trees, more of these smaller cavity nesters are seen “cohabitating” with Ospreys than when nes...

  Salt Point’s Ursula starts her autumn migration, courtesy of Cindy Sedlacek. Little was known about Osprey migrations prior to the twenty-first century. People were baffled how the Ospreys vanished in the fall, only to return to their nests to breed in the spring. Satellite tracking with Doppler transmitters introduced in 1995 in Sweden have become smaller, lighter, and more powerful. These advances changed daily check-ins into real time tracking during the Osprey’s spring and fall migrations. The original migratatory data came from simple identification marks. It is said that in 1595, King Henry IV’s prized Peregrine Falcon disappeared while hunting grassland bustards. Amazingly, the falcon’s body was retrieved from the Isle of Malta, 1,350 miles away. In another instance, a stork was found one spring in the Middle East with a Massai spear in it, showing the bird had spent time in  Kenya or northern Tanzania. History credits John James Audubon with being the first to mark b...