Great news! The Arboretum’s live osprey cam is ON and — just in time — the osprey are BACK!
Staff at the Arboretum first spotted an adult male on the cam nest at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 9. By April 11, a couple of osprey were in the nest eating fish and engaging in friendly behaviors.
Astute watchers have reported that the male bird is marked with a PV band, which is not the male that nested here in the past few years. He is banded, rather, with the letters MS. If MS comes back to claim his nest, things could get interesting.
One thing that may help this year’s nest overall is that Arboretum staff took time last fall to clean out years of debris that had filled the nest, making it less stable for the birds in storms. The hope is that this will make sturdy nest-building easier for the birds, thanks to more depth available in the nest.
Last year one bird, out of three eggs laid, fledged successfully. Since 2001, the Arboretum’s on-camera nest at its current location has successfully fledged at least 30 birds! Fingers crossed for a successful family in 2024.
Cover photo by Richard Bachrach