Connecticut Ospreys Continue to Rebound

Posted by Wayne G. Barber

Once almost wiped out in Connecticut by the use of pesticides, ospreys are continuing to make a remarkable comeback, according to Connecticut Audubon Society officials.
The society’s volunteers have counted and mapped 492 osprey nest in Connecticut this year, an increase of more than 18 percent over 2014.
“Early indications are that Connecticut’s osprey population is thriving,” Alexander Brash, president of the Connecticut Audubon Society, said in praising the 134 volunteers who have worked on the Society’s “Osprey Nation” program this year.
“Ospreys are abundant and our map shows that they are nesting throughout the state,” said Brash.
 

Osprey Nation is Connecticut Audubon Society’s citizen science partnership, launched in the summer of 2014, to monitor the health of our state’s Ospreys. The goal of Osprey Nation is to create a long-term record of data that will give the conservation community a better understanding of the health of Connecticut’s Osprey population. In its first season, Osprey Nation’s 100-plus stewards located 414 nests in five counties and 42 towns, and monitored 174 of those nests. We plotted all the nests and the data submitted by the stewards on the map below. Osprey Nation stewards confirmed that 78 young Ospreys were successfully fledged in 2014, a number that we’re confident is low. The project is off to a great start but we still need your help and expertise! If you live near an active Osprey nest and can volunteer about an hour or two a month to be part of our network of stewards, email us at Osprey@Ctaudubon.org. Among our goals for 2015 are to add nest locations to the map, learn more about nests that are not yet being monitored, start to look for trends that would indicate whether the state’s Osprey population is declining or increasing, and what those trends might tell us about water quality and fish populations. It was only several decades ago that the widespread use of DDT brought these great fish-eating raptors to the brink of extinction. But with a ban on this toxic pesticide and the efforts of government biologists, conservation groups and individuals, Ospreys have made a dramatic comeback.
  Our network of Osprey Nation stewards collects and sends us data on the birds’ arrival dates each spring, the location of nests, nesting success and departure dates. We enter the data on a map for everyone to view. Osprey Nation is a partnership with the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and we will be submitting the data to DEEP biologists. We also ask the stewards to monitor the condition of Osprey nesting sites, especially poles, and to work with Connecticut Audubon and the Connecticut DEEP to make sure they are safe and secure.