Osprey on the move

The creek was full of Ospreys this morning with up to four in the air at the same time and two or three others perched simultaneously on Pine Neck. I suspect that these birds are a mixture of locals and migrants but this is just a guess. A male Osprey with a transmitter headed south from Jamaica Bay last week, headed apparently for South America. He traveled over 400 miles in a night flight between the 11th and the 12th and by the beginning of the week he was in South Carolina! You can follow the progress of this bird -- he is known as C2 -- at .

I watched the creek several times during the day today with the idea that the weather -- dry, clear, windy -- was perfect for a raptor migration. But, aside from a single Red-tailed Hawk, the only raptors in view were Osprey but there were plenty of them circling and recircling, ever intent on the water below. I even saw one of them hit the water and come up with a large finny prey -- possibly a menhaden which have apparently been running.

The idea that Osprey might migrate at night was new to me. In general, most raptors and other large water birds move during the day while the passerines fly by night. As mentioned in previous e-mails, most of our local insect-eating song birds have left leaving behind only the woodpeckers to work our standing dead wood and the berry eaters to harvest the fall berry crop.

Eric Salzman