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March 29, 2001 - 'Our" ospreys come home to roostThe Suffolk Times • March 29, 2001 `Our' os HAS YOUR FAVORITE OSPREY returned yet? Ours has. In fact, by the time you read this, most of the ospreys on the North Fork will have returned. It's great to see how people look forward to the return of "their" osprey. I remem- ber when I was teaching in FOCUS Greenport I ON kept a "Date of Arrival" list on NATURE "my" osprey by Paul that in those Stoutenburgh years built its nest on the west side of Moores Woods, an ideal place for me, as I could check on it each day as I drove to school. I kept records for years on the door frame of my office, and that information often made interesting topics of con - versation with my students. Then one year when I returned from summer's vacation, I found the room had been completely repainted, including the door frame. So much for the keeping of osprey records on door frames. The remarkable thing about ospreys is that, outside the time they spend up north here in the summer, they are loners. All winter long they fish in the warm tidal waters of the Caribbean or in some cases the. waters of South and Central America. It's only when they come back north to nest that they get together with their lifelong partner. Some of the osnrevs we see are nonbreeders. It revs come home to roost Suffolk Times Photo by Paul Stoutenburgh Osprey feet are well adapted to catching and holding fish. The bird has the unique ability to turn the outer toe on each foot either forward or backward, therebv orovidine it with tremendous holding Dower. takes from two to five years before an osprey becomes sexually active. During that time some will play house and make attempts at nest building. There are so many variables built into the successful fledging of ospreys — as a matter of fact, all birds — that it makes it difficult to determine the exact reason for a nest failing. Predators such as raccoons or great horned owls, long periods of rain, a poor food supply, and then there's always that dark cloud of pesticides that still takes its toll. It's remarkable to see how nature works. The return of these mighty fish hawks always coincides with the arrival of their food supply, be it flounder, alewife, bunker or others. Now the only thing they have to do is catch one of these elusive swimmers. The osprey is equipped with specially evolved feet whereby the outside toe on each foot can be turned either for- ward or backward, giving this skilled predator a real advantage. It can now grip its prey with two talons forward and two talons to the rear. The bot- tom of their feet are also specially equipped with a coarse sandpaper - like structure that helps them hold onto slippery fish. Once the quarry is spotted, the osprey hovers 80 to 100 feet above, waiting there until it works its way into position for the capture. Then in an almost vertical dive, it drops down on its unexpected prey and at the last moment the deadly feet move for- ward and the bird crashes into the water. His aim is not always perfect but sooner or later those powerful, sharp talons will strike home. Often the osprey is completely submerged in the dive, then with much spray fly- ing and wings beating the osprey rises out of the water, stopping for a moment to shake itself, and then rearranges the catch so that he always carries it facing forward. He will then go to his favorite perch and eat the fish, starting with the head - first. 300 nests in 1930 It's hard to believe just how abundant ospreys used to be. I have a 1930 copy of National Geographic Magazine in which a Capt. C.W.R. Knight wrote an article entitled "Photographing the Nest Life of the Osprey" on Gardiners Island. In it he tells of the 300 osprey nests he found there. That seems almost impossible in today's light, but then ospreys nested everywhere in the early days. One of the factors that helped us decide where to build in 1955 was when Clayton Billard told us that years before an osprey had nest- ed in the big oak tree at the edge of the woods. That cinched it. We bought the wood lot and built our nome. Capt. Knight had good reason for studying ospreys on Gardiners Island. He was from Scotland, where ,the ospreys had become extinct because of the then "sport,' of egg collecting. Eggs of all kinds were collected and the rarer the egg, the more valuable it became for the collector. Besides pho- tographing ospreys, Capt. Knight took ospreys back to Scotland in hopes of reintroducing them into the wild. I wonder if any of the Ospreys ospreys there now are from nested his original Gardiners Island everywhere birds. Some of my earliest pho- in the tographs were of ospreys early days. nesting in big trees. It was while looking through my camera lens that I first noticed house sparrows using big osprey nests in which to build their own little nests. Evidently the mass of sticks and rubble made the ideal spot to build. Now away from predators, high in the air, with the pair of ospreys above, the sparrows have found the perfect combination for nest building. Later, I noticed that this nesting trait of the house sparrow was a common occurrence. Speaking of house sparrows, I see them fighting and quarreling over who will get to use my bird box this spring. They make quite a commotion chasing after each other. Sometimes they battle so furiously on the ground that I can walk right up to them with- out their noticing me. Round and round they go, rolling over in the leaves, squabbling and chattering all the while. But then there are other signs of spring around that I'm sure you have noticed. Our little downy woodpecker who visits our suet feeder now has a mate that he follows around constant ly. They, like the chickadee, titmouse and other cavity nesters, will soon start laying their eggs because of the protection their nesting cavities pro- vide from the weather. And should you be lucky enough, one of these early nesters might even choose that bird box you put up last year to raise its vouna in.