Camera at Nest 313 at Island Beach State Park.

If you’ve been wondering how you can participate in OspreyWatch without access to a nest in your neighborhood, you can check out these nests on our website. Our partners provide access to view live broadcasts at no charge. Please click on the links and contribute observational data on these nests.

Nest 125  Dunedin Osprey Cam, Florida, USA
Nest 198 Hailuoto-Marjaniemi, Finland
Nest 313 Island Beach State Park, New Jersey, USA
Nest 374 Terrapin Cove, New Jersey, USA
Nest 489 Bay of Quinte, Canada
Nest 200 Janakkala, Finland
Nest 300 Nova Scotia, Canada
Nest 199 Seili Island, Finland
Nest 379 VIMS Watertower, Virginia, USA
Nest 953 Boulder County Fairgrounds, Colorado, USA

Nest 300 in Nova Scotia, Canada

Nest 199 in Seili, Archipelago Sea, Finland

In the first year of the project, over 800 volunteers in 5 countries monitored 1500 osprey nests. Volunteers documented the arrival of the adult ospreys migrating back from their wintering areas in the Southern Hemisphere, counted nestlings, and documented their first flying attempts. You can read a detailed nesting diary and view a photo gallery from a nest in Montana here: Nest 956

Volunteers are being recruited for the 2013 season from local birding clubs and from the general public. To join a growing community of global citizens, please visit http://www.osprey-watch.org and become an OspreyWatcher.

The mission of Project OspreyWatch is to bring citizen scientists together in order to collect information on a large enough spatial scale to be useful in addressing three of the most pressing issues facing aquatic ecosystems including global climate change, depletion of fish stocks, and environmental contaminants.

Osprey are one of very few truly global sentinels for aquatic health. They feed almost exclusively on live fish throughout their entire life cycle. They are a top consumer within aquatic ecosystems and are very sensitive to both overfishing and environmental contaminants. Nearly all populations breed in the northern latitudes and winter in the southern latitudes, effectively linking the aquatic health of the hemispheres. Their breeding season in the north is highly seasonal making them an effective barometer of climate change.

OspreyWatch is a user-friendly, internet platform that allows observers across the globe to map their nests, log observations, upload photos, and interact within an observer forum. Information entered into the platform will be immediately accessible to users and will be summarized following the breeding season.

The Center for Conservation Biology is a research group shared by the College of William and Mary and the Virginia Commonwealth University. Our primary focus is to conduct research that solves conservation problems.

Six week old Osprey chick banded on the James River, Virginia USA. Photo by Bryan Watts

Since returning to breed in late March the osprey population along the upper James River has produced a large crop of chicks.  Broods have now reached the ideal banding window between 4 and 7 weeks of age.  Beginning this week Bryan Watts, Marian Watts, and students Courtney Turrin, and Jake McClain have been out on the water banding broods.

Birds are being banded with standard aluminum USGS bands and purple field-readable bands.  Our objective is to band approximately 100 birds per year for the next several years within this study area. Birds returning to breed will be identified and monitored for the next 20 years.  Over time, we hope to better understand how the emerging population fits into this historic ecosystem.

Students at the College of William and Mary band Ospreys as part of a long-term research study.

Virginia (shown in picture) 
Finland
New Jersey
Maryland
Washington D.C.
Florida