Installing Osprey Nest Platforms

For years, the Osprey was pushed to the brink of extinction as the result of coastal over-development.  In recent years, the birds numbers have recovered thanks in no small part to the hard work of Ben Wurst, Habitat Program Manager for the Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey.

Ben runs a program of installing artificial Osprey Nest Platforms all over the marshes of the New Jersey Shore.  His blog, The New Jersey Osprey Project follows Ben and his campaign of habitat restoration.

Back in December, the Babelers gathered at Ben’s house to help build 14 of the nest platforms.  Then again on March 15, 2009, the Babelers teamed up with Ben and braved the freezing rain to install ten of these nests at sites on several marshy islands in and around Holgate Inlet in Barnegat Bay.

After a few shaky minutes of struggling with the winter protests of stubborn outboard motors, we were on our way accompanied by a few friends, a representative of the local newspaper, and even fellow nuclear engineer Ruben Martinez who toughed it out most of the day with a boot full of ice cold saltwater.

Ben took his time to point out the names of several different species of birds (I already forget most of them) and explained the finer details of the Ospreys and their habitat.  The birds are actually quite clumsy during a landing and hence they chose the wide open marshes as the ideal place with plenty of room for an easy approach.  He also built a few smaller perches a few feet away from the main nest. It seems the male will spend very little time on the nest, leaving the task of incubation to the female.  When the male returns from fishing, he will often opt to rest away from the nest, making this side perch a nice resting place.  It seems that even guy birds like to come home after  a hard day’s work an plop down on “his chair.”

The Ospreys mate for life, and so Ben hopes that each successful nest will result in a pair of Ospreys that return to the area each year to raise more young.  So far, every single nest Ben has put up in the Holgate Inlet area has been nested in, with several nests successful in raising young.

Over the course of 8 cold and wet hours, we managed to install all ten platforms, a new record by Ben’s account.  A family of Harbor Seals heading north for the summer stopped to rest on one of the islands and caused a bit of a distraction to the crew.  Sadly we also found a stillborn baby seal on the island.  It was unfortunate that mother nature chose to reveal her ugly side on a day like this, but such is the way of things in the frigid water of the North Atlantic.

At the end of the day, we all had some stiff legs, runny noses, and high hearts knowing we had donated our time to such a worthy cause.  In the coming months we plan to provide a video showing the days work, and in the summer we will accompany Ben under nicer weather as we inspect the nests and apply numbered tags to the young.  Birds raised in Ben’s nests have been found as far as Columbia this year and we will continue to support his work as he restores the Jersey Shore to it’s former glory.

~Man Overboard

Images Used in this Post

Osprey image courtesy of Flickr user MikeBaird published under the CC license.