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Health & Fitness

Osprey Have Returned to Harford County

Ospreys assemble large, conspicuous nests in the open, on top high platforms such as cell phone towers. They've returned to Harford County to mate and breed.

If you’re driving along Route 40, near the Riverside business park, it’s hard not to notice the big bird’s nest on an electrical pole along the highway, especially now that some of the area around it has been bulldozed and cleared.

That nest, and others like it in along the coast in Harford County, is home to a pair of osprey.

Osprey are large hawks that feed almost exclusively on fish, and so they build their nests near water. You can see them soaring along the coastline searching for prey; then they’ll dive down feet first to grab a fish by its talons and carry it back to its nest or perch.Their huge, conspicuous nests are usually built of sticks, twigs, and driftwood on high platforms such as electrical poles and cell phone towers.

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To identify an osprey from other birds and raptors - their underbody (or what we can see of them from the ground) is whiter than other raptors. Their bodies are relatively slender, with long narrow wings. Their head is white, with a brown stripe along the eyes.

At the end of March, osprey returned to Harford County from having migrated to South America for the winter. They’re forming their nests, courting, and mating. Besides the nest I’ve been watching for some time, I noticed last weekend that osprey have started assembling another nest directly across the street. A third one in the area is on a cell phone tower across from the entrance to the Anita C. Leight Estuary Center in Abingdon.

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A fun thing to do as you observe nests is to record your findings online. Osprey-Watch is a global organization that collects information on osprey to monitor the health of aquatic ecosystems. You can post pictures of the nest you’ve found, and track nest activity, such as when the adults arrived or when you first see baby osprey.

Here’s my page on Osprey-Watch where I’m tracking the three nests mentioned in this post.

Special thanks to bayphotosbydonna , an avid osprey-watcher, for inspiring me to pay more attention to the nests in Harford County and for sharing one of her gorgeous Chesapeake Bay wildlife photos for this post.

Where have you noticed osprey nests? Have you seen any osprey at the nest?

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