Bree Hawkins

Osprey House Tour 🪹 🦅

Now that Osprey season has come to an end, I’m finally sharing the house tour <3

First floor: the marsh! In our area (coastal NJ), ospreys tend to prefer salt marshes over fresh water lakes. This is why we don’t see them nesting on campus, despite having dedicated nesting platforms. You’ll often see them just chilling in the grass 🌾

Second floor: the perch! We install perches near all of our nesting platforms to give the adults somewhere to perch off the nest. You’ll often see adults feeding on perches or watching over the nest. When selecting nesting sites that aren’t on a platform, ospreys typically choose a location with somewhere nearby to perch

Third floor: the nest platform! These are square shaped, and sometimes are lined on the underside with chicken wire or plastic fencing to prevent nesting material from falling through. Usually parents do a pretty good job at building a secure nest, even without the “safety net”! Parents will construct a nest out of sticks, marsh grasses, and seaweed. They lay their eggs in the center in the indentation 🪺 there are perch extensions on the nest platforms as well!

Headphones were worn & I lip-synched so as not to subject the young chicks to extra noise and stress! Filming was limited to the short amount of time we were collecting data and changing out SD cards in the game cameras. All research is conducted under proper permits with @stocktonuniversity @stocktonsciences. Do not interfere with nesting wildlife!

Will be sharing more on the outcomes of our season now that field season is winding down. Sadly we saw losses around 85% this season :(

All of these clips were filmed early in the season in June

#osprey #birds #birding #birdwatching #birder