August 15 2012. Badenoch, ON. I can never look at an Osprey these days without thinking back to my adolescent years in the U.K. Back then (the 60s) Ospreys were avian rock stars, and I blandly assumed that I would never ever see one in my life; shows how short sighted a young lad in post war England could be.
Ospreys had been extirpated from Great Britain by 1915; they were the targets of gamekeepers whose job it was to maintain healthy stocks of fish and game for their landowner employers. Probably Ospreys were never very abundant so the methodical destruction of these conspicuously nesting birds was quite easily accomplished. The Osprey vanished from the landscape so the salmon stocks were spared some trauma; all they had to worry about were the gentlemen anglers.
Then, sensationally, in the 50s a pair appeared on Loch Garten in northern Scotland. Ospreys are found on every continent except Antarctica, so the rest of the European population had presumably survived okay; it’s not far from Scandinavia to Scotland for strong flyer like the Osprey so a return to the British Isles was more or less just a matter of time. This time the Osprey pair was cherished and closely guarded, they were avian rock stars remember, and in due course nested successfully; today the Osprey is well reestablished, and at last count there were over 180 nesting pairs in Great Britain.
Much the same fate befell the White-tailed Sea Eagle, which was reputed to snatch innocent lambs from their mothers’ care and was therefore a blight to be eliminated. They too have since been reestablished to breed along the west coast of Scotland; but that’s another story.
Today after a pleasant hour or so scanning mudflats for shorebirds, with reasonable success (including yesterday’s Black Bellied Plover again, Lesser and Greater Yellowlegs, Least Sandpipers and a few well hidden Pectoral Sandpipers) I found myself driving through a small settlement that rated little more than a handful of houses and a small park with a baseball diamond. It was important enough though to have floodlights, and on the top of a bank of lights a pair of Ospreys has established this nest. They’ve been breeding for several years on this nest which is now starting to appear a little lopsided.
A very respectful, even nurturing, relationship obviously exists between today’s enlightened sportsmen and these Ospreys; quite a contrast to the tactics of sportsmen a century ago.
