Ospreys Learning To Spread Their Wings

On a recent summer morning, a flurry of osprey in flight high above a tidal salt marsh called, sang, dove and otherwise circled the nest below. The birds of prey that day were likely immature or fledgling osprey hatched some two months ago, getting their wings wet, so to speak.

According to Maggie Jones, director of the , osprey migrate back to Connecticut in March, repair their nests after winter damage and “get down to business.”

“It takes about 33 days for the eggs to hatch. Around here, most were born in late May,” she said in an email. And in this particular nest, there may be two, three, even four, young osprey.

Large, with a wing span of up to 6 feet, mature osprey, also called fish hawks, have distinct markings; mostly brown with whitish or light gray on the head and dark eye patches. But the young osprey
are a little different.

“The immature (osprey) are just as big as the adults, but they have pale edges to their feathers, so they appear lighter in color,” Jones said.

“Locally, most of the young fledged (left the nest) last week (about 52 days -- two months after they hatched).”

And one knows they’re around; they make quite the racket.

“They make lots of noise flying about,” Jones said.

She explained that the fledglings “practice flying, soaring at great height and landing for a while, then the parents teach them to fish.”

“By the end of the summer they will be expert fishermen,” Jones said. “They hunt anywhere from about 30 feet to 100 feet above the water.

The  osprey seen this week were flying high, very high.

“When they are really high, little specks in the sky, they are not hunting,” she said.  

Now about that nest.  

The osprey, which was a threatened species decades ago but saw a resurgence following the DDT ban, builds its nest atop poles – utility or otherwise – but in this case, its nest is a platform designed especially for the raptor. Jones said osprey couples use the same nest
each year.

“If the nests survive the winter, they continue to add to them year after year and they can become huge (and quite heavy),” she said. “After the torrential downpours last year, some big nests collapsed from the weight when they became saturated.”

Jones said the DPNC doesn’t officially monitor any of the local platforms: “But we field plenty of phone calls and I do keep an eye on some of the local nests, mostly out of personal interest.”

And while the large bird of prey is found quite literally across the globe -- save for Antarctica -- it is nonetheless a sight to see. Anyone who drives along the shoreline with any frequency can enjoy the raptors perched like royalty high above all the slithering marsh creatures
below.

So if you’re driving by, take a gander before they’ve flown the coop for the winter, most likely to South America.

We should be so lucky.